Öresundskraft District Cooling | Helsingborg, Sweden
In the city of Helsingborg in Sweden, the municipal energy company Öresundskraft supplies District Cooling to a variety of customers in the downtown area. Customers include large users such as a pharmaceutical production facility and a major hospital together with an array of offices and other commercial buildings. The system that has been in operation since 1999 has now been reengineered to allow for an expansion to 30 MW (thermal) cooling capacity and to significantly improve energy efficiency and environmental performance. The new production mix includes the use of cold sea water and absorption chillers powered by surplus heat from industrial processes and waste incineration. Öresundskraft by this initiative makes a sustainable and competitive cooling service available to customers on a city-wide scale by using sources that are renewable or that otherwise would be wasted. The major benefits of the project are reduced use of primary energy and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases due to increased energy efficiency and to using technologies avoiding the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) as refrigerants. Phase down of such refrigerants is the main target of the Kigali amendment to the Montreal protocol. The project has undergone an extensive environmental impact assessment and is fully operational since the second half of 2018. Hopefully the project can act as a show case in demonstrating the concept to others.
