CARE-HEAT: Improving Thermal Fairness and Efficiency in District Heating Networks

District heating networks are increasingly being deployed in modern cities to provide space heating and hot water to buildings. Due to the intermittency of energy sources, these networks can face challenges under extreme conditions, such as very cold outdoor temperatures, which may lead to thermal unfairness and reduced efficiency. Therefore, a coordination unit is crucial for effectively managing these challenges and maintaining network performance. By abstracting district heating networks as cascade control systems, this paper introduces a novel coordination scheme for district heating networks. This scheme, which is called CARE-HEAT, is designed to improve thermal fairness and efficiency within these networks, while also addressing high-level cross-building policies. We evaluate CARE-HEAT and demonstrate that it improves thermal fairness by <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\approx 84 \%$</tex> compared to uncoordinated networks, and by <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\approx 67 \%$</tex> compared to networks where hot water flow is distributed equally among buildings.