Yeah… most optimizations for District Heating are simple (not actually so simple, there are a lot of variables to consider and the networks are very complex) calculations to figure out how much you can lower forward temperatures while maintaining customer requirements.
But there are some cool things going on that actually look to optimize these massive heating networks. For instance, my company creates digital twins (1:1 emulations that model the network in real time) that optimize the energy usage by leveraging analytics, ML, and physics modeling, to lower energy usage.
This is starting to trickle down to the consumer level as well, I’m already talking to engineers doing this for individual buildings.
Disclaimer: not an engineer
Thanks for the niche rant in an industry I actually work in!
I fucking love In the Loop, but it took me a few viewings to understand what the hell was going on. I should watch it again.