Your choices:
1 Water; 2 Comfortable indoor climate
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | 2 Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | Fuel: Liquid | Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| 1 Water | Fuel: Solid | Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
The energy in flowing water can – from all practical standpoints – be used for nothing else than for electricity production. Electricity should – from a thermodynamic point of view – not be used for indoor climate control. However, the simplicity, the relatively low price and the compactness of modern AC-units has made the use of electricity for climate control popular.
With the global warming the need of cooling during summers is increasing and as long as climate control is provided using individual air-conditioning units the need for electricity is bound to increase and to become more and more seasonal.
Provided the reservoirs are big enough to handle the seasonal variations in precipitation such seasonal variations in electricity demand can to a great extent be met by the production of electricity in hydropower stations but there is a limit to the resource. Therefore, this is not a recommended solution.