It’s Conference Season for the District Heating and Cooling Sector – and the ARV Project Was There Too!

The ARV project has been actively contributing to this year’s district heating and cooling conferences, showcasing innovative substation concepts and real-world results from our demonstration activities. By sharing insights and engaging with experts across the sector, we’re helping shape the future of efficient, low-temperature district energy systems in Europe.

As part of the ARV Sønderborg demonstration project, we have developed and showcased innovative methods to enhance the performance of building-level district heating substations. The focus has been on cascaded substation concepts, which help reduce the return temperature to the district heating network. This reduction provides several key benefits, including improved efficiency of the thermal plant, lower heat distribution losses, and increased capacity within the district heating system.

To share our findings with the scientific community, we participated in key international conferences, including the 19th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling, held in Genk, Belgium, in September 2025. At the symposium, we presented our paper titled “Improved District Heating Return Temperature by Cascading Concepts.”

Our analysis demonstrated significant potential for annual flow-weighted return temperature reductions in district heating systems—achieving up to a 9.5°C decrease compared to traditional reference concepts. The proposed cascading substation concepts proved to be robust across a range of climate conditions, represented by cities such as Helsinki, Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome. The most favorable results were observed in locations with long heating seasons and moderate climates.

These analytical findings are supported by a two-year field test conducted at Sønderborg Andels Boligforening, carried out as part of the ARV Sønderborg demonstration project.

The scientific committee of the conference not only accepted our paper but also selected it for publication following a rigorous double-blind peer-review process.

Out of a total of 135 submitted abstracts, 56 were accepted for oral presentations. From these, 25 were invited to submit full papers, and ultimately, 5 were recognized with awards. We were proud to be among the five and honored to receive the “Award for Research Excellence in District Heating and Cooling” for our contribution.

The paper was a collaborative effort by Jan Eric Thorsen, Oddgeir Gudmundsson, and Marek Brand (Danfoss – DCS – Solutions & Technology), together with Michele Tunzi (Technical University of Denmark), and will soon be published by Springer Nature.