UTENs: Future Forward Energy Delivery

Thermal energy systems are growing among large, private entities that need to deliver reliable energy across an entire campus of varied building types. With a network of distributed energy, the owner, like a university or hospital, can employ energy-efficient tech­nolo­gies like geothermal and sewer heat recovery to better manage and improve delivery.

The success of these energy districts has led public utilities to ask the question: What if we expanded those systems to serve an entire neigh­bor­hood, or even a town? 

Taking cues from successful European examples, energy providers—like Eversource in New England—are piloting the first utility thermal energy networks (UTENs) in North America. 

UTENs facilitate the connection of multiple inde­pen­dently-owned facilities and structures, resulting in collab­o­ra­tive energy sharing among diverse stake­hold­ers. 

The heat exchange process begins with the ambient loop trans­fer­ring thermal energy to a building's distri­b­u­tion system with the help of a heat exchanger. This loop then carries the heat throughout the other connected buildings, reaching the heat pumps stationed within each structure. 

The users can either draw energy from the network for heating purposes or contribute excess energy generated by their operations to the energy pool. This rela­tion­ship between off-takers and suppliers promotes resource opti­miza­tion and enhances overall energy efficiency. 

The successful imple­men­ta­tion of UTENs relies on efficient planning and sophis­ti­cated modeling techniques. "We not only modeled the energy loads for the buildings connected right now, but we also modeled the buildings that the utility would connect to in the future," said Jacky Kinson, who served as CDM Smith lead mechanical engineer on the Eversource project. Kinson and other project engineers analyzed energy loads and forecasted future demands to ensure scalability and resilience. This signifies the importance of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary collab­o­ra­tion and rigorous quality assurance protocols.