WarmteStad and Gradyent sign a long-term agreement to futureproof the district heating operations in Groningen 

WarmteStad, Groningen’s public heating provider, is partnering with Gradyent to implement a Digital Twin to optimise its complex, multi-source heating network for more than 6,000 customers. This solution will streamline operations, enhance energy efficiency, and support future network expansion. 

WarmteStad is the public heating company of Groningen which is responsible for running an innovative district heating network that delivers heat to more than 6,000 customers. As a public heating company, they are a leading example in The Netherlands. The heat is produced by a complex mix, including 3 heat pumps of 1.7MW each that utilise waste heat from nearby data centers, a 37 MW solar thermal field, a seasonal buffer of 1,000,000m3 and 3 gas-fired CHPs of 0.9MWth and 0.73MWe.  

To futureproof its operations, WarmteStad decided to partner with Gradyent to implement a Digital Twin that can optimise both the dispatch and forward temperatures in real-time. WarmteStad already operates its heat network in a modern way and has automated the daily operations in SCADA. However, the company is seeing a growing complexity in its production setup, which poses limitations on the current way of controlling the operations.  

This complexity also highlights significant opportunities for further optimisation. As WarmteStad plans to double the size of its network over the next three years, key questions arise around the most effective ways to manage and operate it. These factors led WarmteStad to partner with Gradyent and leverage the capabilities of the Digital Twin Platform. 

“Managing our diverse production assets amid volatile electricity markets is a constant challenge. Our system setup offers flexibility to capitalise on these opportunities, but it’s a complex task we initially had to simplify. With Gradyent, we can now embrace this complexity, optimising our heating system to respond to market fluctuations and internal demands, including network hydraulics and user needs. We believe this system-level optimisation is a critical step toward future-proofing our operations and reducing CO2 emissions.”

Wouter Deddens, COO at Warmtestad Groningen

Optimising the end-to-end heating system with a Digital Twin 

To help WarmteStad manage its increasingly complex system, Gradyent will develop an end-to-end real-time Digital Twin of that system. The Gradyent Digital Twin Platform combines and integrates all available data sources, while real-time physics-based models run in the background, interpreting the data and calculating the hydraulics within the network to determine the optimal heat supply. 

By implementing Gradyent’s Digital Twin, WarmteStad will obtain a single-source-of-truth that continuously updates and recalibrates to give the organisation a complete understanding of the entire heating system. 

The Digital Twin will enable WarmteStad to futureproof the heat supply in daily operations and keep costs as low as possible by minimising heat losses, maximising the COP of the heat pumps, and optimising the heat production against electricity markets in real-time. In the future, WarmteStad expects the Digital Twin to also improve decision-making around large and complex asset investments on further expansion of the system.  

“We are very excited to partner with WarmteStad, who has managed to build out a highly innovative and fast-growing district heating network in Groningen. Its system is exemplary for the sustainable district heating of the future, and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership together.”

Michel de Koning, CCO at Gradyent