FVB Supporting Major Investment in District heating System
Barkarbystaden is the largest expansion area of the city of Stockholm. A former airport was converted into a modern district here. FVB is responsible for all district heating design. The work also includes moving the current transit line.
Barkarbystaden is in Järfälla Municipality, northwest of Stockholm, and the expansion of the new district has been ongoing here for a few years now. A total of 18,000 new homes, 140 neighborhoods, and 10,000 new workplaces are planned here by 2030. The majority of the properties will have district heating.
“On behalf of E.ON Värme, we are designing all district heating in the area. This involves both main lines and service lines. In total, this will be about 3.5 km of lines with a heat output requirement of 36 MW,” says Oskar Österberg, consultant at FVB.
The area was previously a military and regional airport, but it was shut down in 2010 after nearly 100 years of aviation operations. Therefore, there was hardly any existing infrastructure at the site, except for a transit line for district heating. As an entirely new district is now being built, there are many lines and large pipes that will share space in the ground – district heating, water and sewage, power lines, fiber networks, and garbage collection. At the same time, ground reinforcements need to be made in the area.
“It’s so crowded in the ground that finding space for all the infrastructure is a challenge. We have to carefully plan how and where to supply the pipes to the various neighborhoods. We will also need to move the transit line for district heating,” says Oskar Österberg.
The transit line is connected to Stockholm Exergi’s network and to E.ON’s new CHP plant at Högbytorp. The reason it needs to be moved is that properties will be built on the site where the current transit line is located.
“It’s unusual that you need to move transit lines. When we do it in Barkarbystaden, many people will be affected because the line is connected to the district heating network in Stockholm,” says Oskar Österberg.
“The interruption, that is to say the time when the line can be out of operation, can be a maximum of two weeks and needs to be done in consultation with both new developments and those who have agreements for district heating supply,” says Oskar Österberg.
The new parts of the transit line will take about 10 months to build, so when the actual switchover is to happen, everything needs to be prepared in order to meet the schedule.