Abstract
Supply chain planning of energy is vital and associated with the coordination and cooperation between the participating bodies, such as suppliers, logistics providers, distributors, and customers. The supply chain of heat networks in an integrated industrial area combines supply and demand management across the facilities. The implementation poses significant challenges due to supply chain complexity, uncertainty in variables, and space area limitation of suppliers. This study proposed a Peer-to-peer (P2P) approach to evaluate the economic analysis of solar thermal network configurations. The economic viability is assessed in terms of the levelised cost of heat (LCOH), including the cost for solar collectors and storage facilities required. The analysis is applied to an illustrative case study to compare optimal smart thermal networks for decentralised and centralised scenarios. The P2P scenario is more cost attractive because the LCOH is 72 MYR/MWh, which is lower than scenarios 1 and 2. The payback periods for all scenarios are over 14.5 y. The investment cost for decentralised system with a P2P concept is MYR 2,363,655, while the centralise system is more costly at MYR 8,075,822.
