Annex TS5: Integration of Renewable Energy Sources into Existing District Heating and Cooling Systems
Final report
Guidebook for the Integration of Renewable Energy Sources into Existing District Heating and Cooling Systems
Supplementary reports
State-of-the-art Country Reports
Technology and Application Factsheets
Meet Annex TS5
We will present our results at an “Annex TS5 and SupportDHC special session” at the 19th International Symposium on DHC on September 7th-10th, 2025 in Genk, Belgium.
General
District heating and cooling offers an efficient and flexible, organizational and technical solution for the energy transition in the heating and cooling sector. It provides a broad platform and a major lever for the integration of all kinds of renewable energy sources. The research of Annex TS5 has investigated and evaluated the state-of-the-art and best practices at international level for introducing RES into existing large urban DHC systems and thus transforming and decarbonizing their heat supply.
The Annex TS5 was a four-year international collaboration from 2021 to 2024 including international R&D and industry partners. The participating countries were Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Irland, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.
Topics addressed by Annex TS5:
- RES technologies for DHC – gaining up-to-date knowledge about the current status of the DHC transition for countries participating in the project, about the recently developed or enhanced solutions for suitable RES technologies as well as about methodologies for RES DHC potential assessment
- Transformation of large DHC systems to higher shares of RES – providing practical knowledge on transformation processes for DHC systems to a high share of RES including bottlenecks, challenges and key enablers, planning tools and review of case studies
- Decentral integration of RES into DHC systems – providing practical knowledge and reviews of technical and non-technical aspects for the decentral integration of RES into DHC systems, including planning criteria, integration and operation challenges
- Non-technical aspects in RES DHC transformation processes – presenting and discussing aspects in the regulatory framework and supportive measures that favor DHC decarbonization
Annex TS5 guidebook and supplementary reports
The guidebook presents and summarizes the results of the R&D work performed within Annex TS5. The title “Guidebook” is derived from Annex TS5’s intention to present the results in a practical manner, facilitating their direct application and use by practitioners from the district heating sector as well as authorities and politics. At many points, the guidebook refers to supplementary reports elaborated within the collaboration of Annex TS5. These reports deepen their specific topics and present e.g. methodologies, case studies and analyses results in more detail (see downloads at the top of this page).
Contact and task manager:
Thomas Pauschinger
AGFW-Projekt GmbH
Stresemannallee 30
D-60596 Frankfurt a.M.
Germany
Email: t.pauschinger@agfw.org
