REPLACE Highlight North Macedonia: Purchasing a heating system for a multi-apartment building? SDEWES developed a techno-economic study for North Macedonia

If you are thinking of purchasing a renewable heating system not only for your own house, but for a multi-apartment building, the process is easier if you can assess in advance whether the purchase is worthwhile. REPLACE partner SDEWES developed a techno-economic study for a representative building in the KaGoP region that showed promising results.

The study assessed the economic feasibility of collectively purchased inverter heat pumps (air-air heat pumps) and PV systems and sharing energy in a residential multi-apartment building. The analysis provides an analytical, techno-economic assessment related to the decarbonizing of residential heating by using shared, collectively generated clean electricity from PV systems. This is a valuable opportunity for energy sector coupling in the local context. For the analysed building with seven households, it was found that they would reduce their electricity bills, reduce energy demand and return their investment in a relatively short amount of time.

Based on a realistic 3D simulation model of the building, using the PVSol software and the REPLACE your Heating System Calculator developed by SDEWES-Skopje, the results showed that when heat pumps are used instead of resistive heating, the primary electricity demand for heating of the buildings is reduced by about 3 times, while the total electricity demand, considering other energy use such as lighting, cooking, water heating etc., is reduced by about 34 %. On top of this, the electricity imported from the grid is additionally reduced by 16-26 % if a collective PV is added to the rooftop of the building, depending on the size of the PV generator.