Evaluation of the LoRa® technology and assessment of its relevance in optimal district heating management

Mohamed Mabrouk (1, 2) , Pierrick Haurant (1, 2) , Laurent Toutain (3, 4) , Bruno Lacarrière (1, 2)

1 IMT Atlantique - DSEE - Département Systèmes Energétiques et Environnement
2 GEPEA-OSE - Optimisation - Système - Energie
3 OCIF - Objets communicants pour l'Internet du futur
4 IMT Atlantique - SRCD - Département Systèmes Réseaux, Cybersécurité et Droit du numérique

One of the more promising paths towards integrating new and renewable energy sources and enhancing the efficiency of energy systems is deploying more smart and interconnected energy networks with distributed energy generation. This is the case of district heating networks which are becoming more decentralized and where consumers are becoming prosumers. In such 4th generation heat networks a suitable management of the generation facilities is essential to optimize cost and environmental impact. The decision making requires a complete vision on the state of the grid at each instant. For this purpose, communication solutions are vital tools to exchange information from and towards substations. Technologies like LoRa® and SIGFOX are suitable candidates especially when renovating existent networks. These solutions are already used for many applications related to the Internet of Things (IoT) and require in-depth study of their suitability for monitoring district heating networks. In this paper, we focused on Lora® technology which has the strength of being easy to deploy at low cost and in an unlicensed band but has, in the same time, some limitations like duty cycle and transmission losses. At a first stage, fundamental concepts of LoRa technology are introduced. The limitations of this technology are also recalled and taken into account to simulate the transmission losses of measurements when using LoRa. In a second step, the modelling tool HeatGrid is used to simulate the optimal management of a district heating network using such altered or incomplete information. HeatGrid is a pseudo-dynamic model based on oriented graph formalism and linear programming that simulates optimal use of multi-sources district heating. The tool optimizes heat production mix at each time step by minimizing exploitation costs. This approach enables to test the potential of LoRa® technology in optimal management of heat sources.

Mots clés: Smart Heat Grid; Information and Communication Technologies; LoRa®; Signal transmission; DH modelling and optimization

Domaines: Thermique [physics.class-ph]

Mohamed Mabrouk, Pierrick Haurant, Laurent Toutain, Bruno Lacarrière. Evaluation of the LoRa® technology and assessment of its relevance in optimal district heating management. ECOS 2018 - 31st International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems, Jun 2018, Guimaraes, Portugal. ⟨hal-01879564⟩