Oleksandria is a city located in Kirovograd oblast in central Ukraine with a population of approximately 100,000 people.
The district heating utility of Oleksandria, “TeploKomunEnergo” is the initiator of the project. The district heating company serves heat to almost the whole city population. The company has nine boilers in operation with a total capacity of 195 MW and heat generation of approximately 210 GWh/year. The district heating network includes almost 150 km of district heating pipelines and 23 central substations.
Oleksandria Demonstration Project – overview
The district heating generation in Oleksandria was primarily performed at a remote large boiler station and distributed via a district heating network that covered the central parts of the city. The boilers were in poor condition, and the state of the existing district heating network implied energy losses of more than 20%. The district heating company’s medium- and long-term planning was to convert the existing central substations into boiler houses with modern and efficient equipment, and the completed demonstration project was one step in this development.
As a long-term strategy, there was a need to improve the quality and achieve a more cost-efficient production and distribution system. The completed project, which aimed at smaller decentralized units, was not the most common solution, but it had been thoroughly discussed and found to be the best possible option under the circumstances. The advantages were the reduced distribution losses in a long transmission pipeline and efficient production close to the consumers. The disadvantage was that these smaller units had gas as the only fuel alternative. Many cities and district heating systems had similar conditions to Oleksandria, and this decentralization solution to smaller units could be an alternative for several of them.
Oleksandria Demonstration Project – details
The project included the installation of condensing boilers. The existing central heating substation for the area (CHS-118) had served a residential area, with six nine-storey buildings housing a total of approximately 1,800 apartments, a kindergarten, a school, along with an after-school program and a library. CHS-118 had been disconnected and decommissioned, and the building was repurposed as a boiler house for the new boilers.
Specifics of the Oleksandria project included:
- Installation of new gas boilers (7.5 MW) in a former central heating substation.
- Network replacement – approx. 1,000 m of district heating pipelines and obsolete and deteriorated pipelines in basements of the buildings.
- Installation of a small-scale CHP for production of electric energy for the needs of the boiler house.
The investment was EUR 658,662. The financing plan was as follows:
- Total loan – EUR 244,662 (37%)
- Total grant – EUR 300,000 (46%)
- Total Oleksandria local contribution – EUR 114,000 (17%)
The project benefited the local community by:
- Saving 8,300 MWh heat per year
- Saving 1,140,000 m³ gas per year
- Saving 380 MWh electricity per year
- Saving 1,320 tonnes CO2 per year
Current status
The project was completed in autumn 2015. All goods were procured, installed and successfully commissioned. Loan completely paid off in 2019.
Photo credit: Nataliya Shestakova