KWH Freeze’s waste heat to Vantaa’s district heating network

Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment has granted support to a project in which the waste heat from Oy KWH Freeze Ab’s cold storage could be used in Vantaa Energy’s district heating network to heat homes and commercial buildings.

The project is currently in the pre-planning stage and would be implemented by Vantaa Energy. The idea is to build a system that will recover the condensation energy from the cooling of the cold storage. The condensation heat would be heated to match the district heating network by means of heat pumps powered by renewable electricity. In the past, the challenge has been precisely that the condensation heat is not immediately hot enough for the district heating network.

The heat recovered from KWH Freeze could be used in Vantaa’s district heating network as early as next year. The annual amount of energy to be recovered is expected to be up to 42 gigawatt hours, equivalent to the annual consumption of about 2,300 single family homes.

KWH Freeze is the largest frozen storage provider in Finland and is based in Vantaa. Its customers include wholesalers, food industry operators and importers of frozen food. KWH Freeze both stores and handles frozen foods and rents space to customers who handle their goods themselves.

Read more from Vantaa Energy’s homepage (in Finnish).