Economic Daily: Calculating Two Books for Centralized Cooling: Guangzhou University | Jinan | Two Books
This summer, the global average temperature has broken records multiple times. The high temperature is unbearable, and the public yearns for coolness. The old technology concept of centralized cooling has regained its youthful vitality and has recently appeared on social media hot searches multiple times.
The principle of centralized cooling is similar to that of winter centralized heating in northern China. It involves regulating the water temperature at the cold station and transporting cold water through pipelines to the user's terminal for cooling. As early as 2000, China issued the "Regulations on the Development of cogeneration", encouraging various regions to develop urban hot water supply and centralized cooling, expand summer cooling load, and improve annual operating efficiency. Some cities have been exploring the construction of regional cooling systems since then. At present, there are regional centralized cooling systems in Shenzhen Qianhai, Guangzhou University City, Beijing Zhongguancun, Jinan Central Business District, and other places.
What is the prospect of centralized cooling? Can you enter ordinary people's homes? This requires calculating the environmental and economic accounts.
Calculating environmental protection accounts, centralized cooling has a very broad prospect.
Regional centralized cooling adopts efficient refrigeration units and professional team management, which greatly improves energy efficiency compared to split air conditioning and decentralized central air conditioning. It has significant energy-saving effects and huge emission reduction benefits. On the one hand, the installed capacity of centralized refrigeration equipment is much lower than the sum of user built refrigeration equipment, and it can use surplus electricity to make ice at night and store ice during the day to provide refrigeration services, achieving peak load shifting and valley filling in summer electricity consumption. On the other hand, if densely populated areas in cities are distributed for cooling, each household's air conditioning system will exhaust heat to the outside, which will exacerbate the heat island effect. In summer, temperatures in certain areas of the city can be 6 ℃ or even higher than those in the suburbs; Centralized cooling can significantly reduce heat emissions and effectively alleviate the heat island effect that troubles cities.
From the urgency of emission reduction, the trend of global climate change is still ongoing, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is urgent. This will bring new development opportunities for various environmental protection and energy-saving technologies. For example, the centralized cooling system in Guangzhou Chengtou University City can save 24000 tons of standard coal, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60000 tons, and reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 480 tons per year, equivalent to the carbon sequestration capacity of 2600 acres of forest. In the future, climate change will clearly provide stronger impetus for the promotion of centralized cooling.
Calculating economic accounts, centralized cooling still requires cost reduction.
In theory, centralized cooling has significant energy-saving and emission reduction benefits, so its economic viability is beyond doubt. But reality is not that simple, it is not easy for centralized cooling projects to make profits. As a complex project, centralized cooling has the characteristics of economies of scale: the more people use it, the cheaper the unit price, the fewer people use it, and the more expensive the unit price. If large-scale promotion is not possible, there is a possibility of falling into a unsustainable situation. For example, the centralized cooling project in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, which was launched in 2000, involves three locations including Taiyuan Railway Station, with a total cooling area of over 40000 square meters. The centralized cooling period is from the end of June to the end of August each year. However, due to the transformation and upgrading of cold source power plants and the fact that the cooling area has not increased for many years, it was suspended in 2014.
At present, centralized cooling is mainly used for the construction of new public places in densely populated cities such as university towns and business districts. If we want to promote it to ordinary residential areas in cities, the price is a sensitive factor that cannot be avoided. On the one hand, the cost of renovation is high, and centralized cooling requires changing the original refrigeration system and laying new pipelines, which will cause damage to the original decoration of the building. Most users who have completed the decoration and installed air conditioning are unwilling to pay for the renovation cost. On the other hand, the usage fee is not low and lacks market competitiveness. In some communities in southern cities in China that have promoted centralized cooling, the monthly cooling fee for residents reaches several hundred yuan, which is equivalent to or even slightly higher than the air conditioning electricity fee.
Therefore, in order to promote centralized cooling, it is necessary to reduce user costs, which can be approached from two aspects: first, to tap into technological potential, such as developing simpler and cheaper renovation plans to reduce initial installation costs, and further reducing energy consumption through big data and artificial intelligence technology regulation to lower operating costs. The second is policy support, which includes centralized cooling in the planning of urban new areas, making centralized cooling a modern urban infrastructure similar to centralized heating, tap water, urban gas, and electricity. It can be constructed synchronously with other infrastructure, reducing construction costs and exerting economies of scale after the new urban area is put into use.
Centralized cooling is not only an environmental protection project, but also a livelihood project. It should be low-carbon and also cost-effective. We need to calculate two accounts well and proceed steadily according to local conditions.
