Demand Assessment
The demand assessment and appropriate system selection provides the basis for the design of the entire plant and is therefore an important part of the QM system. According to the Q-guidelines, the main planner has to submit an appropriate documentation. An EXCEL spreadsheet and the corresponding manual are available as free downloads for entering the required data and for plausibility checks.
EXCEL tool
QM provides an EXCEL tool for the demand assessment and appropriate system selection to support the main planner in order to:
determine the load characteristic of the overall system (required in the Q-guidelines) according to the heat demands of the individual heat consumers;
determine the annual duration curve of the required heat output from the load characteristic, the climate data and the comfort requirements for space heating;
determine the production share of the biomass boiler.
The EXCEL tool enables the Q-manager to check the plausibility of the design data supplied by the main planner, because the key figures and characteristic curves required by QM are calculated automatically. Although the table is not a planning tool for determining the required heat capacity and heat demand of the individual consumers, the EXCEL tool can be used for determining the required heat output of the entire plant (load characteristic curve) and the design of the biomass boiler in a bivalent plant. For the final design of the plant, the calculation of the main planner is always decisive.
The following figure show the annual duration curve of the required heat output as a result of the EXCEL tool. In this example, the heat production of the biomass boiler is framed in green. It covers about 90% of the annual heat demand, the rest is generated with fossil fuels.
