SIEMENS

Steam spews from district heating pipes that are several meters in diameter. In the icy winter air, it forms what looks like giant puffs of cotton, producing a fairy tale winter scene. In reality, however, the scene is a showcase for waste, as each white puff indicates a leak through which a tremendous amount of hot water is being lost. District heating systems can be found in nearly every big city in Russia. But some parts of these systems are more than 50 years old and could thus be much more efficient.

The Russian government has now declared war on such waste. Plans call for the country to reduce its primary energy consumption by 40 percent by 2020 from 2007 levels. A recent study on energy consumption and energy-savings potential in the city of Yekaterinburg in central Russia on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains shows how this objective can be achieved.

Siemens Management Consulting and BASF, supported by representatives of the city and of its Swerdlowsk administrative district, recently analyzed the city’s energy consumption and determined the costs and energy-savings potential associated with various measures, including the installation of thermostats for heating units and use of building insulation materials and energy- efficient lighting systems. The partners found that by implementing only those measures with the best cost-benefit ratios, an investment of €3.6 billion would be necessary. However, this would result in energy savings of 44 percent.

Urban Power Plant. It was concluded that building retrofitting and insulation would generate exceptional savings benefits. Installation of heating control devices alone could save the equivalent of 3.8 terawatt hours of primary energy per year - which isn’t surprising, given the Russian penchant for moderating the temperature of heated rooms by opening windows. Investment here could be recouped within just a few months. Another key lever involves restructuring energy production. “In many Russian cities, the water for district heating is produced in gas-fired boiler houses right in the middle of town,” says Alexander Gushchin, Regional Sales Director at Siemens Industrial Power Oil and Gas in Moscow. “Electricity, on the other hand, is often generated at power plants outside the city. However, if you built combined-cycle power plants within a city, you could produce both electricity and hot water in an energy-efficient manner.”

Large power plants in the middle of cities that are already plagued by pollution? That’s exactly the approach Moscow took to address the problem it had with the new Moscow International Business Center (MIBC). The Center is similar to business districts such as Canary Wharf, which is located in London, UK, and La Défense in Paris, France. But the MIBC required more electricity and hot water for its operation than the public grid could provide. In order to supply this city within a city, local authorities teamed up with a private investor to build the Moscow City power plant close to a residential area. They were able to do this because modern combined-cycle power plants produce a relatively low level of emissions. The plant is equipped with two Siemens SGT-800 gas turbines.

Gushchin believes that combined-cycle power plants could also be used in many other cities. “If you operate gas and steam turbines in sequence, as is the case in Moscow, you can achieve an overall efficiency of nearly 90 percent,” he says. Standalone boiler houses can achieve an efficiency rating of around 90 percent as well, but the production of electricity just outside a city is a lot less efficient. In fact, the old steam-turbine plants still in operation around the Russia achieve efficiency levels of only around 35 percent. “If you replaced the existing boiler houses with combined- cycle power plants, you could produce the same amount of hot water and electricity with 30 to 40 percent less gas,” says Gushchin. Essentially, this is possible for two reasons: Waste heat is utilized and modern combined-cycle plants produce electric power much more efficiently.

According to the study, applying such a structure to Yekaterinburg could save 5.7 TWh of primary energy equivalent per year. And if all the leaks in the country’s district heating network were then plugged, Russia’s ambitious energysavings goals would appear to be realistic. The fairy tale clouds, however, would disappear.