Leveraging Fluidit Heat to design and simulate district heating infrastructure.

January 2022

Are you considering an expansion of your industrial site? Urban planning with district energy simulation? A hydrogen distribution network, perhaps? Then it’s time to call the experts at Rotterdam Engineering if you operate in the Netherlands.

Dutch engineering consultancy Rotterdam Engineering B.V. helps cities, municipalities, utilities, industrial enterprises, and building contractors address challenges related to hydraulic systems, particularly in underground infrastructure. For several years, the team at Rotterdam Engineering has been a happy customer of Fluidit Heat, our simulation software for district energy systems. We thought it was a great reason to discuss their experiences.

About Rotterdam Engineering

One of the pipeline engineers at Rotterdam Engineering is Mark Supper, a graduate from Delft University of Technology. Mark has been using Fluidit Heat for a year now.

“You could say that our team at Rotterdam Engineering consists of draftsmen, constructors, engineers, and specialists. As an engineer, one of my main tasks supporting hydraulic calculations is to carry out stress analyses to ensure that pipes can handle temperature expansion and pressure,” Mark explains. “It’s all about exchanging knowledge and expertise within our team as well as with our customers. In that context, Fluidit Heat helps us to design and simulate heating infrastructure.”

There’s plenty of underground infrastructure in the Netherlands, as Mark puts it: “It’s fascinating how crowded it is down there. Some 80 percent of our projects involve underground city heating systems, water and sewer pipes, and the like. Natural gas pipes are steadily going out of fashion, but we do have projects involving hydrogen, nitrogen, and CO2 – anything that can contribute to the clean energy transition.”

Proud of the personal touch

The Rotterdam Harbor area is, of course, crowded with pipes, both visible and invisible. Above ground, the consultancy company has projects in the harbor with steam infrastructure, among others. The engineering consultancy services are approximately 100 people strong as part of the UPA Group. Their ambition is to serve the largest part of the country with various engineering challenges.

“Some of our competitors have more scale but we pride ourselves on our more personal relationships we build with our customers to provide specialty engineering solutions. They tend to come to us – and come back to us – with enthusiasm for what we deliver and our social engagement.”

“Cities and municipalities need to think and act on the energy transition,” Mark continues. “Sometimes we get involved in a preliminary design for infrastructure surrounding a newly planned residential area or a large building project like a hospital. Or a utility company that wants to build its own heat network. Or a building contractor who has to lay pipes but needs our knowledge and experience to design and engineer them.”

A typical question from a municipality is: ‘As we want a city heating network for 30 semi-detached houses, how much capacity do we need? Where should the pipes go? How much will it all cost?’

Value for money

Rotterdam Engineering knew exactly what they wanted and didn’t even need to attend both of the onboarding training sessions that Fluidit provides. For Mark and his team, ease of working with location data was an important requirement when evaluating Fluidit Heat.

“We were primarily interested in a calculation and simulation tool that works with geographic information systems (GIS), making it easy to import, manipulate, present, and export maps,” Mark says. “Fluidit ticked all the boxes. For example, we really liked the color coding for temperature, pressure, speed, and direction of matter within the network.”

“Fluidit ticked all the boxes. For example, we really liked the color coding for temperature, pressure, speed, and direction of matter within the network.”

“One project where we used Fluidit Heat focused on greenhouse horticulture. With the software, we can run a scenario that assumes a certain level of energy consumption five years from now, showing us how the network – or rather, different variations of a future network – will manage. Or we can play out a present-day scenario in which some of the heating sources would fail: how fast and how well can the network compensate for those sources?”

When it comes to value for money, in Mark’s view, Fluidit’s pricing has been very reasonable. “Before Fluidit, we had used subscription software that was much less affordable, which meant we only tended to activate those packages for use within specific, paid projects,” he says. “The advantage of Fluidit’s pricing is that we can afford to keep the license active and experiment with it even outside of concrete customer projects. I’d say that’s a great advantage for us.”

Not every user is a programmer

Sounds like it’s all “ruusut” (pros) so far. Any “risut” (cons)?

Mark: “Come again? Oh, I see. Well, one thing is the software’s extensibility. It is very open. A user can add functionality using Python scripts, tailoring the tool to their needs. I wonder if Fluidit could make certain extensions available off the shelf, though. Like a library of plugins or even pieces of code that one could copy”, Mark suggests. “In short, the freedom to tweak the software is killer, but not every user is a programmer. It might lower the threshold if the developers at Fluidit offered some more examples.”

For a highlight, he says that the Rotterdammers are particularly happy with Fluidit’s support: “The team in Finland has been so helpful and open. When we have a question, we always receive a comprehensive response within days. And I love it that they routinely follow up to check if we’ve got it”. That customer centricity appears to be ingrained in the company’s culture. You can recognize the same vibe all the way through the software’s user interface and even on the wiki help page.”

“Fluidit’s customer centricity appears to be ingrained in the company’s culture. You can recognize the same vibe all the way through the software’s user interface and even on the wiki help page.”

Conclusions

Fluidit Heat is a perfect fit for utilities of all sizes. It caters to all your thermo-hydraulic modeling needs. Whether you want to build new pipelines, plan optimal locations for power sources, or design heat storage, Fluidit Heat is the number one tool for you.

If you’re interested in learning how Fluidit Heat can elevate your district heating or cooling projects, reach out to us at sales@fluidit.com or fill out the contact form.