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HeatReFlex: Green and Flexible District Heating/Cooling in Turkey Project

Prof. Dr. Ayşegül ABUŞOĞLU focuses on an international project titled "HeatReFlex: Green and Flexible District Heating/Cooling in Turkey" in collaboration with Aalborg University, Danish Energy Agency, İTÜ, Gazi University, and Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality. This project will lay the foundation for a future bottom-up energy system based on renewables, communities (from building-level up to cities and beyond), and flexibility providing better user motivation/engagement, stability, and transition to sustainability in Turkey to meet the climate commitments and improve economic competitiveness by employing the Danish experience on efficient heating technologies. The project will also develop a technical framework for optimal planning and operation of thermal energy devices and processes in small to large-scale energy communities supporting distributed heating/cooling generation, storage, conversion, and flexibility concerning the technical constraints, regulations, and policies. Within this project, heat-electricity nexus (such as converting excess electric power to heat), particularly when the electric balancing requirements become more stringent in the presence of variable renewables, will be studied. As the "HeatReFlex" project director of İTÜ leg, Prof. Dr. Ayşegül ABUŞOĞLU is researching on Waste-to-Energy based district heating and cooling scenarios and power production. With two separate research groups in the scope of the project, she is developing national inventories in addition to developing scenarios based on municipal solid waste, wastewater, sewage sludge, etc., for improving the country's current waste management. The works published in 2021 in scope of the project can be accessed from the following links