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Summary District Energy System Falun View
History
Falu Energi & Vatten (Falu Energy & Water) is taking responsibility by developing the community of Falun, county Dalarna. Our cooling & heating plant is situated on the brink of the world heritage, Falu copper mine, which for many centuries was one of Sweden´s foremost business activities. That is a tradition we are carrying on.Climate impact
Falun’s investment in climate neutral production of heating, cooling and electricity has globally reduced CO2 emissions by 145 000 tonnes/year. This is equal to emissions from 47 000 cars!
Large investments have been made to replace fossil energy and reduce the global CO2 emissions with renewable power production. Since 2007 the annual production has doubled.
The system
Over the past five years Västermalmsverket has evolved from being solely a combined heat and power plant. By investing in an absorption cooling machine we have reduced the use of electricity for conventional cooling installations. At the same time we are able to increase the production of electricity at Västermalmsverket.
We have built a wood pellet factory which helps us to produce more renewable energy during the warmer period when the need for heat is at its lowest. By doing so we have increased our electricity production and we get wood pellets to use in our district heating production during the winter. These four ingredients make our plant a combined bioenergy plant – it is unique due to simultaneous production of heat, cooling, electricity and wood pellets. And by the end of summer 2014 the system will include district heating being transported through a line between the cities of Falun and Borlänge. This increases our possibility to maintain district heating as a competitive product.
Opportunities for the future
In order to develop a sustainable district heating industry there is a need to spread knowledge about district heating´s minimal environmental impact. This knowledge needs to be transferred not only to customers and the public. It is also important that politicians, policy makers, officials and industry understand total systems and the large picture.
The Sunstore4 project has been developed and implemented by a large international research group, in the framework of a FP7 funded European project.