Kyiv is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine, located in the northcentral part of the country on the Dnipro river. The city population amounts to approximately three million making Kyiv the 7th most populous city in Europe. Kyiv is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural centre of Eastern Europe.
District heating systems occur widely in Kyiv with a capacity of about 13,000 Gcal/h, divided into 804 different heat sources and networks totalling 2,300 km. In Kyiv, the district heating system provides most of the heat and hot water for urban dwellers as well as steam for industry, produced in CHP or HOB plants.
Kyiv Demonstration Project – overview
The proposed project concerned the disconnection of a local network from the existing boiler house, located approximately 800 m from the central substation (CHS) and to convert the CHS to a local production unit with biofuel boiler for base load production and gas boiler for peak load. The existing local distribution network would be replaced with a modern design network and all buildings would be connected to the network via individual heating substations. The investment would reduce the use of fossil fuels in the system and enable the possibility to operate the district heating system as a fully demand-driven and modern system.
The project proposed was to a large extent interesting from a demonstration point of view as it included the installation of a biofuel boiler which would dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels. By the introduction of IHSs the system would also have been converted towards a more sustainable demand-driven system given the possibilities for future energy efficiency measures on the customer level and it will increase the quality of heat delivery to the connected buildings.
Kyiv Demonstration Project – details
The project area was situated some kilometres from the outskirts of Kyiv covering a small village supplied by a nearby water treatment facility. The proposed project area, the so-called DWS area, is today supplied from an existing boiler house located in the premises of Kyiv Municipal Waterworks which supplies heat also to the waterworks areas and facilities, including administrative and process buildings.
Specifics of the Kyiv Project included:
- Installation of a new biomass boiler (1×1.0 MW) and peak/reserve gas boilers in the former central heating substation.
- Individual Heat Substations – Introduction of 22 IHSs
- Network replacement – approx. 1,500m
The proposed investment was EUR 931,000 with a simple pay-back time of 6.4 years. The proposed financing plan was as follows:
- Total loan – EUR 451,000 (49%)
- Total grant – EUR 300,000 (32%)
- Total Kyiv local contribution – EUR 180,000 (19%)
Once implemented, the project was expected to benefit the local community by:
- Saving 7,490 MWh heat per year
- Saving 1,780 000 m³ gas per year
- Saving 2,655 tonnes CO2 per year
Current status
The project was cancelled in 2020 due to proposed changes to the project scope, which could not be reconciled with DemoUkrainaDH criteria.
Photo credit: Falin