Consumer involvement in the transition to 4th generation district heating

In the transition towards 4th generation district heating (4GDH), supply and demand side measures have to be coordinated better than in previous generations of district heating (DH). Building’s heat demand has to be reduced, and heating installations as well as consumer behaviour have to be adapted so as to be compatible with and support lower network temperatures. It is therefore necessary to investigate and understand how consumers can be meaningfully and strategically included in the transition towards 4GDH. This paper provides a literature review of the consumer levels role in 4GDH in the transition towards 100% renewable energy systems. Current literature of 4GDH have been investigated to identify the connection and involvement of consumers in the transition. Even though consumers within the existing building mass have a large role in the transition in terms of heat savings and instalment of energy efficient technologies in the buildings are almost none of the scientific literature addressing how these actions should be implemented at consumer level. From the results of the analysis it is recommended that further research should investigate how to strengthen the coordination between supply and demand sides in order to secure the right initiatives are implemented in the right order

Infrastructuring In Digital Transformation: An Action Case Study Of District Heating

Digital transformation is reshaping the public sector’s provision of the physical, information, and human infrastructures that make a society function. Therefore, we need to understand and help support the infrastructuring that different stakeholders do in a digital transformation to make digital infrastructure work. Against this backdrop, we report a two-year action case study of the digitalization of district-heating infrastructure in a Danish municipality. From our engagement in the development and diffusion of smart metering and a personal energy assistant for 39.830 households, we analyze three defining types of infrastructuring in this digital transformation: 1) Digitalizing heat supply metering, 2) Digitalizing consumers’ heating practices, and 3) Digitalizing through partnering. We explain how digital transformation has two-way relationships to the stakeholders’ infrastructuring work and breakdowns that make digital infrastructure visible. Finally, drawing upon the extant research, we discuss how our study contributes to the research on digital transformation in the public sector