District cooling is the cooling equivalent of district heating. Working on broadly similar principles to district heating, district cooling delivers chilled water to buildings like offices and factories. In winter, the source for cooling can often be seawater, so it is a cheaper resource than electricity to run compressors for cooling. Alternatively, district cooling can be provided by a Heat Sharing Network which enables each building on the circuit to use a heat pump to redirect heat to an ambient ground temperature circuit.[1]
There are also 5th generation district heating and cooling systems (so called cold district heating networks) that are able to provide both heating and cooling simultaneously. In these systems the waste heat from chillers can be recycled and used for space heating or hot water production.[2]
- ^ "District Cooling Networks: using groundwater to heat or cool buildings with heat pumps". Retrieved 2017-10-26.
- ^ Simone Buffa; et al. (2019), "5th generation district heating and cooling systems: A review of existing cases in Europe" (PDF), Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 104, pp. 504–522, doi:10.1016/j.rser.2018.12.059