The Finnish energy company Helen implemented Gradyent’s Digital Twin to support its strategy with scenario modelling and meet its carbon neutrality objectives. Assisted by the Digital Twin's analysis, the company closed one of its coal plants, reducing CO2 emissions by up to 40%, with the plan to switch off another facility by 2025.  

To follow up on a successful collaboration, Gradyent and Helen have signed a three-year contract. As of March 2024, the Digital Twin of Helen’s network operates in real time, providing continuous temperature and hydraulics estimations over the entire network to support decision-making processes in the network’s operation.  

Challenge

Circa 90% of Helsinki is covered by district heating, and around 600,000 of its residents live in apartment blocks connected to the district heating network. Helen provides energy to the city via an over 1400 km long district heating network. 

Helen aims to achieve 100% carbon neutrality in its energy production by 2030. To this end, the company is currently transforming its network and accelerating the phase-out of coal combustion while investing in various low-carbon solutions such as heat pumps and waste heat.  

To optimise its operations and take concrete steps towards decarbonising its heating grid, Helen implemented the Gradyent Digital Twin. 

Solution

The collaboration between Gradyent and Helen started in early 2022, with the collection of data about Helen's heat production and customer consumption throughout the system from c. 15,000 metering points. 

Within six months, Gradyent’s multidisciplinary team of energy specialists, engineers and data scientists, developed a Digital Twin of Helen’s district heating system comprising the entire Helsinki area.  

The Digital Twin model has been trained on large amounts of timeseries data to ensure that it represents the physical network, including all sources, hydraulic components, pipes and customers as accurately as possible. 

The Digital Twin creates a detailed and realistic physical view of the network that is updated constantly with smart sensor data, source data and forecasts. It finds the optimum balance between flow and temperature and thereby ensures that minimal energy is wasted, customers get the required amount of heat, and the heat-pumps operate optimally. 

Results

The development and implementation of the Digital Twin of Helen’s entire district heating system unlocked three major achievements. 

1. Coal plant phase-out enabled by scenario modelling  

The Gradyent Digital Twin supported Helen in decision-making around phasing out coal-powered and gas-powered plants via modelling scenarios. The analysis confirmed the viability of closing two coal facilities and replacing the energy supply with renewable sources such as biomass and both current and planned heat pumps.  

As a result, Helen closed the Hanasaari power plant in the spring of 2023, reducing CO2 emissions by up to 40%.  

Salmisaari A heating plant’s coal-based production was also discontinued in spring 2023. The coal-based production of electricity and heat at the Salmisaari B power plant will be discontinued, and the plant will be decommissioned in spring 2025. 

By retiring all coal facilities and increasing the use of heat pumps and biomass plants, Helen stands to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80% compared to 1990 levels, coupled with a 10% reduction in production costs. 

The Hanasaari power plant closed in spring 2023

2. User performance monitoring for deeper insights 

Gradyent’s Digital Twin also delivered new capabilities around user performance monitoring through the ingestion, validation, and analysis of data from Helen’s 15,000 smart meters. 

The company can now gain new insights for building its demand management capabilities through the user live-monitoring table and dashboard on the Gradyent platform. It allows identifying poor-performing users, defining actions required to improve outcomes, and – as a result – increasing network efficiency.  

As a result, the company can meet the goal of reducing the energy required in the system and the costs for the end users. 

3. Real-time network monitoring 

Gradyent’s Digital Twin allows Helen to gain new insights through the real-time monitoring of the 15,000 smart meters, boosting the company’s demand management capabilities. Helen can identify poor-performing users, define actions required to improve outcomes, and – as a result – increase network efficiency.  

The solution will also provide temperature setpoints of main power plants to optimise network operations, reducing heat losses and CO2 emissions. 

These steps take Helen in the direction of running an end-to-end network autopilot for the scheduling of heat and electricity production, operating the network, and controlling its users. 

"Helsinki has one of the largest and most complex heating systems in Europe, and it is very inspiring to see how they are accelerating the phase-out of coal and investing in a range of low-carbon solutions such as heat pumps and waste heat. We are proud to be part of their journey." 

Hervé Huisman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Gradyent