Building-level heat demand mapping of commercial-residential areas for simulated district heating assessments in Montana, Idaho, and Washington

Depending on the climate zone, structure composition, and industry of a place, building heating in the United States can account for 40-60% of total community energy demand. Providing sustainable energy sources to meet this demand is crucial for emissions mitigation. District heating (DH) is energy agnostic, allowing a community to leverage low-or no-emission, locally occurring, natural and fabricated heat sources. The United States, while being the greatest energy consumer on a per capita basis, lacks the heat demand mapping intelligence necessary to plan for DH potential across communities. This work provides a method to map building-level heat demand using energy consumption surveys and property tax information in the absence of proprietary gas and electric utility data. Three demonstration municipalities in this work are from Washington, Idaho, and Montana. With demand mapping readily available in these areas and elsewhere, the policymaker, planner, and developer can quickly assess system potentials using Comsof Heat, a techno-economic simulation software for DH planning. This software auto-routes the necessary pipe networks along the lowest-cost pathways through a community to meet peak demand, providing multi-heat source integration. The constructed heat demand maps from these communities are imported to Comsof Heat to explore the hypothetical energy sources, payback periods, and decarbonization of building stocks using DH. Inconsistencies in structural data exist in property tax information across state, county, and municipal governments. These inconsistences can lead to uncertainties in heat demand mapping that could easily be overcome through greater coordination by local and regional GIS managers. Despite these uncertainties, it is still possible to characterize most commercial-residential heat demand across municipalities in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. These preliminary heat demand maps should be a public-facing product available from governments. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.