The issues of adapting a city’s energy mix to climate change can be divided into two groups: sustainable operation under climate change and assessing the impact of the energy mix itself on the climate. The second part — with the implementation of a system of allowances and surcharges on emissions — may have as much impact on the development of the energy supply system as the climate parameters themselves.
An initial assessment of the new expected climate characteristics does not raise concerns about the reliability of all elements of the energy complex, as the changes do not go beyond the technical standards provided for in the design of installations and the development of operating regimes. Climate change has a greater impact on annual technical and economic performance. For example:
- The annual average temperature rises and the duration of the heating period shortens, resulting in less fuel consumption and a simultaneous reduction in the economic performance of the power units;
- The load structure is changing, with higher electricity consumption in summer for air conditioning. Providing summer power generation without heat load is less efficient;
- The humidity in the air increases, while the efficiency of the cooling systems at the CHP plants decreases.
The energy complex is a major part of the life support system. All of its components — the electricity, gas and heating systems — are closely linked, especially in emergency situations. Emergencies — once they start in one of the systems — spread to the others. Moscow has been through such situations many times in the last decades — the winter cold of 1978-1979, the May 2005 accident, the cold in January 2006. They have survived, albeit quite severely, and conclusions have been made. It is not so much about emergencies in extreme conditions, which is a big topic in its own right, but about adaptation — preparing to work under new climatic parameters.
To put it another way, not about health problems in bad weather, but about a planned, proper choice of ‘clothes’. Consider the current state of our energy ‘wardrobe’. Moscow power complex is unique because it’s completely built on the basis of powerful cogeneration power units and it almost completely provides the city and part of the adjacent areas with heat and electric power. At the same time, Moscow is the coldest of the world’s major cities, and energy loads can change significantly over a short period of time.
The energy complex is as sustainable as it is conservative — the service life of equipment and facilities is measured in hundreds of thousands of operating hours, over decades. For example, equipment installed 50 or more years ago is now being replaced. Therefore the basic decisions taken today should reliably work for decades.
It is necessary to remember the history. The first district heating networks, a prototype of district heating, started operating in Leningrad more than 100 years ago. But it was in Moscow, where district heating was recognised as the basic solution for supplying the city with both heat and electricity, with the possible fuel supply at that level. It took the Decree of the Council of Labor and Defense on heating and combined heat and power plants of June 26, 1930 and the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party in June 1931, dedicated to development of Moscow power economy in the direction of heating.
The decision to develop district heating was a direct continuation of the GOELRO (State Commission for the Electrification of Russia) plan adopted in 1920. The state of the country’s energy sector at the time was dismal. Reduced coal production in the ruined mines of the Donbas, the cessation of coal imports and oil supplies from Baku actualised the use of local low-calorie fuels and hydropower.
Under the prevailing conditions great importance was attached to the issues of fuel and heat supply, it was decided to organize the All-Union Thermal Engineering Institute (VTI) in Moscow, and in 1923 the First All-Union Thermal Engineering Congress was held. In 1924 the All-Russian Conference on power supply was held, which stated that the terms of implementation of GOELRO had lagged behind, mainly due to problems of fuel supply. In the following years the issues of peat extraction and combustion, coal from near Moscow, oil shale, improvement of boiler designs, development of centralized heat supply were in the focus of attention.
On the basis of the adopted GOELRO plan and the recommendations of the commission on heating under GlavEnergo, it was decided to centralise heat supply to the city on the basis of cogeneration (i.e. combined production at a single power source based on external heat consumption — not to discharge heat into the environment, but to transmit it to consumers).
Heat generation is the most energy efficient way of producing energy, with fuel savings of up to 40%. In 1928, steam with a pressure of about four atmospheres was supplied from the Thermal Power Plant of the All-Union Thermal Engineering Institute named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky (Thermal Power Plant VTI) to the plants Dynamo and Parostroy. The steam pipeline had a diameter of 250 millimetres and was 700 m long. In 1931, the first in Moscow two-pipe water pipeline with a diameter of 250 millimetres was built from HPP-1 along Raushskaya Embankment via Ustyinsky Bridge and two from Moskvoretsky Bridge to Sverdlov Square and Neglinka to the Central and Sandunovsky Baths with connection to the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNH) on Nogin Square (now the Kitay-Gorod district) and the Bolshoi and Maly Theatres — this was the beginning of centralised heat supply in Moscow based on steam turbine CHP plants and water heating networks.
Whereas the operation of hundreds of small boilers used no more than 50% of the thermal energy of the fuel, and the power plant up to 25%, for combined heat and power plants the fuel energy utilisation factor was up to 75%, and the total required fuel consumption was reduced by almost half!
With the development of district heating, environmental problems (at that time not so named) were also solved. In addition to reducing the overall fuel consumption, the shift from small boilers with less than 50% efficiency to CHP plants, where the combustion process was organised better, emission reduction measures were also implemented.
In 1935, the All-Union Thermal Engineering Institute developed the first general scheme for the heating system of Moscow with large cogeneration plants on the periphery of the city on the basis of the adopted first General Plan for the reconstruction of Moscow. This was the first document defining a systematic approach to the development of heating and district heating. Earlier, in 1930, the first All-Union Congress on heating was held in Moscow, at which the following words were uttered: “It is unacceptable that at least one new block in new residential construction should be built that would not be connected to the heating network”.
Cover photo: Mosenergo PJSC
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