Influence of different technologies on dynamic pricing in district heating systems: Comparative case studies

District heating markets are often dominated by monopolies in both Denmark and Finland. The same companies, often owned by local municipalities, are usually operating both supplying plants and district heating networks, while the pricing mechanisms are rigid, often agreed upon for one year in advance. The mentioned ownership scheme may cause problems, when one tries to gain a third party access in order to deliver excess heat or heat from cheaper heating plants. In this paper, two case studies were carried out to simulate the district heating systems based on dynamic pricing. Case studies were carried out for Sønderborg, Denmark and Espoo, Finland. The results showed that dynamic pricing fosters feeding the waste heat into the grid, as dynamic pricing reduced the total primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions in both case studies. In the best scenarios, the weighted average heat price decreased by 25.6% in Sønderborg and 6.6% in Espoo, respectively. •Potential for dynamic pricing of district heating in existing networks was studied.•Marginal-cost based heat production was simulated for Denmark and Finland.•The impact of additional waste heat and thermal energy storage was assessed.•Adding low marginal cost heat production decreased total turnover and emissions.•Dynamic pricing offered realistic pricing for waste heat throughout the year.