Introducing Sæby Varmeværk
Sæby Varmeværk is a district heating utility with 5 employees and a total heated area of around 680,000 m2, which has seen a continuous increase in consumers since the utility opened. At the moment, it seems that the number of consumers has peaked at 3,847 by the end of 2023, but with plans of new developments in the area, the trend looks set to continue.
Sæby Varmeværk is a relatively simple heating utility with only 2 pipes to deliver all the heat. They have close to 5 km between the heating plant and their furthest consumer, that naturally results in a pressure loss during the journey. Therefore, they have a high interest in ensuring that consumers' heating installations are working properly to increase the capacity of the network, maintain a stable temperature, achieve savings and transition to 100% fossil-free heat production by 2030.
Everlasting development and constant growth
Sæby Varmeværk, as we know it today, is located in the south-western part of Sæby town. It has been there since the transition to natural gas and cogeneration in 1988. Back then, the number of consumers was around 2,300. A 4.1 MW gas turbine was added, which has been replaced by a 6 MW electricity; and 7 MW heat generating gas engine in 2001. At that time the number of consumers had increased to around 3,000.
In 2009, the heating plant began to focus on renewable energy, including the installation of a 12 MW electric boiler. In 2011, they established a solar collector system of approximately 12,000 m2, which has since been expanded to 37,313 m2. In 2015, they installed an absorption heat pump to further increase the efficiency of the heat production, and two years later, a new 15 MW boiler was installed to have an environmentally approved reserve. There are also plans to build a data center on the heating plant's site in the near future, where the surplus heat from the data center will be used for heat production.
How do we get more out of our data?
Sæby Varmeværk had equipped their customers with smart heat meters that can be read remotely a long time ago. But the real benefits waited to be realised yet. "All our meters were more or less remotely read, so we actually had this nice meter package that we didn't use at all apart from collecting the data once a month," says Karsten Thiessen, Operations Manager at Sæby Varmeværk.
Therefore, Karsten Thiessen and Steffen Simonsen, Energy Advisor at Sæby Varmeværk, investigated whether it was possible to use their data more actively. But as Karsten Thiessen explains, they have faced many unknowns:
"We wanted to work more with our return temperature, but how do we do that? And where do we find the time for that? And who will do it? And what do we do now with all the customer enquiries that we also have to address, and it might be an iterative process?"
In other words, there was a clear interest in doing something, but without knowing how. On that account, Sæby Varmeværk contacted Kamstrup to learn more about how they could get more value out of their Kamstrup meters. Both parties agreed that the RTO service package was an obvious solution.
What is RTO?
The Return Temperature Optimizer (RTO) uses data from remotely read heat meters to optimise the district heating network, saving resources at the heating plant and also sparing consumers’ wallets. RTO is a service where Kamstrup assigns a dedicated energy advisor to a utility to take care of all the hard work associated with finding the consumers' poorly functioning district heating installations. This way the data analysis does not steal focus from other tasks at the utility.
Kamstrup takes care of:
- Monitoring the return temperature of consumers
- Identifying installations with faults
- Contacting installation owners about the problem
- Follow-up on repairs
- Checking the impact of the notifications
The purpose of using RTO at Sæby Varmeværk
RTO can primarily be used as a means of lowering the return temperature, but at Sæby Varmeværk the goal is to increase the overall capacity of the network:
"Our challenge was not so much that there was a high return temperature. It was more about increasing the capacity in our network, so that we can lower the supply temperature on the basis of our consumers utilising the heat better"
Karsten Thiessen, Operations Manager at Sæby Varmeværk.
Sæby Varmeværk's focus on supply temperature is related to their use of heat pumps, which they also want to optimise: "When you have heat pumps in the system the higher supply temperature means less efficiency. So, in the background there is a secondary optimisation, where the lower supply temperature we can get, the better return we relalize on our production equipment," says Karsten Thiessen.
Activating consumers leads to more optimisation
For Sæby Varmeværk, RTO has proven to be a significant benefit in terms of encouraging consumers to optimise their own heat installations. "There's no doubt that we have also optimised the individual equipments generating energy, that don't really match the investment, but people install them anyway," explains Karsten Thiessen and elaborates: "We focus on optimisation, even for those who just need to adjust some minor things or change some simple valves."
It's not just utilities that are interested in energy efficiency, but also ordinary citizens who are either striving for a more manageable heating bill or want a more sustainable solution. With RTO, Kamstrup can just ping locals and tell them if there are any faults in their heating installations and how much they can save by getting them fixed. In addition to benefiting consumers, it also benefits the heating plant, as Karsten Thiessen explains: "We achieve way more than we could, with the time we had for such tasks."
RTO became a popular tool for quality assurance
In addition to activating consumers, the initiative has also sparked interest among professionals, as Steffen Simonsen explains: "We have definitely seen an increase in enquiries, not so much from consumers, but mostly from professionals, plumbers, caretakers and such."
The increased popularity is coming from Kamstrup's energy advisor looking at the data for each heating installation and measuring the effect of the repairs. In other words, we can see if a repair has not been done properly. Initially, this led to somewhat divided opinions, but this was quickly turned into an advantage, as Steffen Simonsen explains: "Now it's just a natural thing that plumbers actually call and ask - sometimes even in advance."
Karsten Thiessen emphasizes this development as one of the most significant consequences of the collaboration between Sæby Varmeværk and Kamstrup: "Perhaps the most important journey is that we are indirectly starting to change the mindset of the plumbers. They should not only fix a single heating equipment, but they need to deliver an entire heating network that runs properly."
In this way, Sæby Varmeværk contributes to raising the average quality level of both repairs and new installations in their network. However, the increased number of enquiries did not mean that the heating plant's employees have become busier than before: "The calls we have received are not a problem for us. It's not like we now have to direct a lot of them back to contact Kamstrup. We don't get overloaded at all."
Good and efficient customer service
As part of the collaboration with Kamstrup, Steffen Simonsen also has access to the RTO client portal, and according to him, it has been a useful and satisfying tool in his daily life:
"When I'm contacted, I really want to help, and I feel I have the right help with RTO to do that. It's a real pleasure."
Steffen Simonsen, Energy Advisor at Sæby Varmeværk.
Previously, Steffen Simonsen used to have to visit consumers and see their heating installation with his own eyes, he now can use his time more efficiently: "Having access to the RTO portal has made it much easier for me to solve something for those who have contacted me." That way, he can focus on the more specialised cases that require his perspective.
Close collaboration with good communication
An essential part of the RTO service is keeping the collaboration between Sæby Varmeværk and Kamstrup as easy and transparent as possible. According to Karsten Thiessen, this has also been an important part of the project for him: "Overall, I actually feel that Kamstrup has been really good at keeping us informed and running these status meetings. Things are monitored and tasks do not fall off the table. Kamstrup pays us the attention that it should."
Sæby Varmeværk is already good at thinking innovatively and taking initiatives to optimise energy efficiency. From Kamstrup’s point of view, it is therefore not about telling them what to do, but about providing a service solution that supports Sæby Varmeværk in reaching their goals. In this connection, Steffen Simonsen also says that the collaboration around the RTO has worked flawlessly: "I'm very satisfied with the whole process, and I think we've been well involved and are constantly informed."
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