40%, 70%

Henrik Hofor

The Hofor District Cooling utility company in Copenhagen has the potential to supply in excess of 200 MW of District Cooling in the city. It has over 60 delivery agreements and a contracted supply profile of over 50 MW.

According to Henrik Lorentsen Bøgeskov, who heads operations, the company has a commitment to save as much CO2 as possible and, to that effect, reinvests in new areas in order to expand the CO -saving potential. In 2015, the company posted a profit after tax 2 of USD 1.4 million.

The company’s application profile includes air conditioning, server cooling and process cooling. It serves its customers on the basis of an agreement, where it installs and tests an exchanger and measures and bills consumption.

When it comes to the production of chilled water, the temperature decides the production allocation, which includes seawater, electrically driven and absorption technologies. The seawater cooling involves the use of titanium heat exchanger technology and is the predominant production allocation (see chart). As a further measure to optimise environmental performance, Bøgeskov says Hofor shifts District Cooling production to off-peak night hours, when electricity price is low.

Bøgeskov says the total reduction of economic costs for the customer reaches up to 40%, in the form of lower energy costs, lower cost of capital and O&M. The Hofor process, he says, involves remote reading of consumption on the basis of minutes, hours and days, and easy billing, which the company said, promotes transparency of costs.

Bøgeskov says the company’s efforts yield up to 70% reduction of CO2 emissions, adding that it is able to achieve this, because the District Cooling plant uses carbon dioxide-friendly energy sources. Also, it uses no refrigerants that legally need to be phased out.

The writer is Editor, Climate Control Middle East and Co-Founder and Editorial Director, CPI Industry.