Simulative evaluation of high temperature versus low temperature heating networks to utilise waste heat from large fuel cells for powering districts

Fuel cells have emerged as promising combined heat and power systems owing to their environment friendly operation and negligible emissions. Since fuel cells also generate heat as a byproduct during operation, this waste heat could be also used for district heating. In this paper, the bidirectional sector coupling of a high powered fuel cell electric vehicle is simulated in order to power a virtual district in Berlin with electricity and heat. This paper displays the simulated heat demand satisfaction by benchmarking a low temperature heating network versus a high temperature heating network. For the scenarios and the neighbourhood considered in this study, it was found that a single fuel cell vehicle can provide about 90 % of total energy to the considered neighbourhood in case of a high temperature district heating system and 99 % in case of a low temperature district heating system.