Transforming an old town full of listed buildings, a burial mound and a fortress canal to an energy-efficient suburb is a challenging task. But the municipality of Lyngby-Taarbaek has taken up the challenge, and soon the citizens of Kgs. Lyngby will be able to enjoy cheap and sustainable district energy.
Located just north of Copenhagen and founded back in the Viking age, the city of Kgs. Lyngby is an attractive place to live. The narrow cobblestone streets and the old listed townhouses characterize the city centre, and the fortress canal crossing the city creates many recreational spaces within the city centre. But while all these things make Kgs. Lyngby an attractive place to live, they also make it much harder to transform the underlying energy system from the old oil and gas system to a modern and energy efficient district heating system.
- The high density of the housing makes it difficult to perform the necessary changes without causing too much trouble for the citizens by e.g. diverting traffic. We had to cross the fortress canal twice, cross two railway lines, an ancient mound, pipes and various old foundations, and this has been quite a challenge, Pierre Brøndum, project manager at Ramboll, explains.
The first crossing of the fortress canal was one of the critical phases in the project and took place in June 2016.
- Due to soft ground, one of the major challenges in this project was to cross the fortress canal. The soft ground created a risk of the canal or the underlying tele cables being damaged, and therefore we had to take special measures in order to reduce the risks. The crossing was completed successfully as a result of close cooperation between the employer, the project group and supervision group of Ramboll and the contractor, says Pierre.
Had the canal crossing not succeeded, a very big part of the project planning would have had to be reconsidered.
- Another challenge was the fact that we had to connect the 16 bar system in Lyngby with an existing 25 bar system. In order to keep the costs down and to make energy as cheap as possible for the consumers, the connection was made without an exchanger. This meant that we had to develop a system that could separate the two systems, within seconds, if the pressure was too high on the Lyngby side.
A Cheap and Sustainable Solution
Despite the many challenges along the way, environmental and financial considerations make a strong case for transforming Kgs. Lyngby’s energy system to district heating. Implementing district heating not only minimizes the energy costs for society in general, it also provides consumers with considerable savings on their energy bills. On top of that, replacing the old oil and gas system with district energy will also result in a substantial reduction in Co2 emissions.
Ramboll is working closely with Vestforbraending and the Municipality of Lyngby-Taarbaek on the project, which will be completed by the end of 2018.