This investigation focuses on the potential of harvesting heat rejected from the cooling and refrigeration systems of buildings with high year-round cooling and refrigeration demand (e.g., ice arenas and grocery stores) and using it to heat other nearby buildings. Integrating a small group of buildings with diverse thermal demands via a low-temperature micro-thermal network effectively allows wasted thermal energy to be harvested and shared among the buildings with minimal thermal and mechanical losses. This paper presents a reduced model that shows the potential of harvesting thermal energy between buildings by calculating the amount of heat energy simultaneously shared between the connected buildings on a five-minute time resolution. The model also evaluates changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the amount of energy that is still required from supplemental heating sources after harvesting relative to conventional stand-alone building systems. This study shows that changing the operating temperature of the micro-thermal network when primarily sharing between diverse thermal demand buildings has a minor effect on GHG emissions but can have a larger effect on electrical energy consumption. The model is applied using actual utility energy consumption at one of the potential clusters in Ontario, with results showing that approximately 48% of the cluster’s total heating requirements can be covered by instantaneous sharing between buildings, and an additional 12% can be covered by daily short-term thermal storage. This reduced heating demand results in an approximately 74% reduction in total GHG emissions.

这项调查的重点是收集从全年冷却和制冷需求高的建筑物（例如，冰场和杂货店）的冷却和制冷系统排出的热量，并将其用于加热附近其他建筑物的潜力。通过低温微热网络将具有不同热需求的一小组建筑物有效地集成在一起，可以有效地收集浪费的热能并在建筑物之间共享，同时将热和机械损失降至最低。本文提出了一个简化模型，该模型通过以五分钟的时间分辨率计算连接建筑物之间同时共享的热能量，显示了在建筑物之间收集热能的潜力。该模型还评估了温室气体 (GHG) 排放量的变化，以及与传统独立建筑系统相比，采暖后补充热源仍需要的能源量。本研究表明，当主要在不同热需求建筑物之间共享时，改变微热网络的运行温度对温室气体排放的影响较小，但对电能消耗的影响较大。该模型使用安大略省潜在集群之一的实际公用事业能源消耗进行应用，结果表明集群总供热需求的大约 48% 可以通过建筑物之间的瞬时共享来满足，另外 12% 可以通过每日短期蓄热。