Roll-out in 50,000 housing units: enercity AG optimizes district heating supply with Leanheat® Building

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

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Enercity AG optimizes district heating supply

The AI-powered software Leanheat® Building helped Hanover’s district heating utility systematically integrate buildings side of the network and achieve a 5-10% reduction in energy consumption and a 20% reduction in peak loads.

The challenge: Integrating the secondary side into the planning and control of grid operation 

District heating suppliers previously lacked insight into individual buildings and users' heating needs. Enercity now uses Danfoss' Leanheat® Building, an AI-powered cloud software, to collect and analyze data for efficient network control. This enables demand-based temperature regulation, reducing peak loads and energy consumption while serving more consumers with the same power capacity.

The solution: AI-based flow temperature control and peak load control 

Leanheat® Building was piloted in a total of 24 properties over two heating periods. enercity AG installed Danfoss ECL 296 controllers and IoT wireless sensors in 120 of 900 residential units to monitor temperature and humidity. The data was transmitted via enercity's LoRaWAN network to the Leanheat® Cloud for continuous analysis.

The result: Significant reduction in energy consumption and peak load leads to a comprehensive rollout 

The pilot project met expectations, reducing energy consumption by 5-10% in the first heating period and peak loads by nearly 20% in the second. Based on these results, enercity plans to roll out the solution to 5,000 apartment buildings with 50,000 residential units by 2027, using network-compatible controllers and sensors.

We had a problem, we found a solution, we established the solution. It delivered exactly the desired result, thus we are now rolling it out completely.

Simon Zöller, , Senior Vice President Marketing & Sales, enercity AG
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Leanheat® — For true energy optimization. From people to production.

Buildings account for a staggering 40 percent of the world’s energy consumption. And in Europe alone, almost a third of residential heating comes from fossil fuels.
Leanheat empowers district energy networks to optimize the operational efficiency of buildings and increase the comfort of end-users through end-to-end software solutions.