Relevance of architectural design on the efficiency of district heating systems

At the global level, district energy systems have been used at different scales; Complete cities; University campuses and at the level of autonomous neighbourhoods, proving that district heating and cooling systems can optimize the use of energy of buildings by allowing to recycle heat which otherwise would be wasted or difficult to use. The question about the impact that the architectural and urban design has on these systems arises, since the energy performance of a building is dependent of the adequate architectural design. The main results of this review show that architects designing should work together with engineers early on the design process to define the main aspects of the district heating system, by means of a heating and cooling master plan that defines relevant parameters such as proportion of glazing and orientation, space for the installation of solar heating and photovoltaics panels and thermal mass of the buildings. The use of thermal mass to match energy demand with the availability of solar energy is a topic identified that leads to further research as being able to take advantage of solar energy and solar gains seems to be very relevant to the efficiency of the system.