Brightcore Energy asked Energy Modelling Lab to build a tailored energy systems model to support recommendations for technology investment. The resulting model, TIMES-Arlington, represents the heating and cooling infrastructure of a school and the neighbouring residential area in Arlington, Massachusetts. The existing system relies mainly on natural gas with some electricity, and individual air conditioning units serve the buildings.
The model incorporates local resources, including river and sewage water, and uses eight representative weeks drawn from load profiles, one for each season, with weekdays and non-weekdays modelled separately across each 24 hour cycle. This level of detail was chosen to balance accuracy against computational effort. The model optimises the system across four milestone years: 2024, 2030, 2040 and 2050.
The analysis found that a mix of geothermal and air source heat pumps is the most feasible and lowest cost solution for the future system, with substantial cost differences between the technology combinations considered. The comparison covered total discounted system costs, capital expenditure, primary energy supply, final energy consumption, infrastructure costs such as grid expansion and new pipework, and the optimal way to connect residential housing to the different pump technologies.
TIMES-Arlington represents the existing gas and electricity based system alongside candidate low carbon alternatives, using eight representative weeks to capture seasonal and weekday variation without the computational cost of a full annual model.
Technology combinations are compared across the milestone years 2024, 2030, 2040 and 2050, covering system cost, capital expenditure, energy supply and consumption, and infrastructure requirements.
Results were delivered to Brightcore Energy as recommendations for technology investment, identifying geothermal and air source heat pumps as the most cost effective path for the site.
Client: Brightcore Energy
Reference: Not applicable
Collaborators: Not stated on the existing page
EML team: Ida Græsted Jensen, Andrea Marin Radoszynski, Till ben Brahim
Budget: Not stated on the existing page
Duration: October 2024 to January 2025
Model: TIMES-Arlington