Leeds Heat Planning Tool

Note: This tool is used entirely at your own risk. You should only use the tool in the pre-feasibility stages of a project and it is not a substitute for full technical assessment and feasibility studies

Log in or Register for the tool:

1. Click on the ‘Heat Planning Tool’ Tab.
2. If you are not yet registered yet, click on ‘Register’ and fill in the appropriate details.
3. Terms and conditions can be accessed here

Create a scenario on the Control Panel:

1. Select ‘Add new’ to create a new scenario. This will display the selection panel displaying the data sets you can consider within your district heating planning.
2. Select the City you wish to focus on.
3. Give the scenario a name. This will be used as the name for your saved scenario.
4. Select the data sets you want to consider: There is an example selection indicated on the panel. If you wish to keep this, you do not need to adjust the choices on the panel and can proceed to save the scenario. Otherwise, activate the factors you wish to be considered from the three umbrella categories of 'Techno-economic', 'Governance' and 'Social' factors by ticking the appropriate boxes.
5. Choose the percentile cut-off points:  The tool only awards scores to the areas with ‘favourable’ conditions for district heating. This column enables you to specify how ‘favourable’ these conditions need to be by setting what proportion of areas will receive a score for each characteristic.
   E.g. Using a 90th percentile cut-off point for housing density would mean that only areas with a housing density in the 90th percentile or above would receive a score for housing density.

1. Score the characteristics: Each consideration factor is given a score according to the level of importance assigned within the decision-making process. Score each activated factor by giving it a score between 5 and 1. A higher weighting indicates the factor is more important within the decision-making process. The activated values are then weighted proportionally to the number of activated criteria and their awarded score.
2. Overall Weighting %: Remember to keep an eye on the overall weighting of the umbrella categories to ensure that your overall weightings are appropriate for your priorities. i.e. there is no point in identifying an area based only on social factors without consideration of techno-economic factors.
3. Save your scenario!

Add extra data:

1. Add data that you have available for the locations of large heat demands such as hospitals, swimming pools and also heat sources such as energy from waste plants or CHP plants.

Although this step is not essential, the more data that you have available the more useful you will find the resulting map. The data that you add will only be available to your account and will not be shared with other users. You can delete added data at any time.

Display the map

• Once your scenario has been created and saved it will be displayed in the list on the control panel homepage. You can now click on ‘Show Map’ and the thematic map will be created in a pop-up window.
• The darker shading of an area indicates t favourable conditions for district heating based upon the characteristics that you have chosen to represent in the map.
• You can click on an area of interest and the data information for that area will be displayed.