Key learnings

Among the several findings of the H2020 TEMPO project, the following ones are the main learnings:

  • The TEMPO innovations have proven their usefulness in the development and deployment of district heating networks.
  • Reducing the return temperature, implementing demand side management features and end-user information/feedback can have additional benefits versus a high-temperature operation as a traditional network operation.
  • Further insights into building, system and network behaviour are essential for future projects and a lot of data was gathered from the monitoring campaigns to investigate the DH network operations and to train the data-driven models. The development of a control system needs to start from data analysis, rather than from a modelling perspective.
  • Demand side management should be considered from the design phase of a project for easy integration. This will prevent cascading control systems which overrule each other and do not perform the control action. For existing buildings, the integration of TEMPO Innovations is much more challenging.
  • Integration of innovations in district heating networks is challenging, and there is a need for system integrators (IT and HVAC), who do this as their daily-to-daily business. Control and control integration is less advanced than expected. The implementation of ICT and monitoring equipment needs to be carefully planned to ensure full connectivity and interoperability.
  • Innovations developed in TEMPO made it easier to detect and diagnose suboptimal behaviour in specific buildings. However, legal and organisational hurdles meant that in most cases it was not possible to share the information with the end consumers and carry out audits of the building installations to ascertain the cause of suboptimal behaviour, let alone to remediate the issues rapidly.

All demonstrations have delivered highly relevant lessons for further market roll out of the innovations (e.g., adaptability, maturity, future investigations needed) that will be made accessible e.g., as part of the exploitation and replication activities.