⚡ Energy

Open District Heating: Selling Waste Heat Into the Grid

Since 2014, Stockholm Exergi has let data centres, supermarkets and other businesses near its pipes sell their excess heat instead of venting it. Suppliers install their own heat-exchange equipment; Stockholm Exergi updates temperature-indexed prices daily in an online supplier portal and settles payment monthly. More than 20 businesses are now enrolled as suppliers.

Live 📅 since 2014 ✔ Editor-reviewed

✔ Reviewed by the 1001 Smart Cities editorial desk · 🔎 Last verified 2026-07-28

⚡ Energy Smart grid & energy Sensors & IoT

📊 Impact

A supplier delivering 1 MW of heat for most of the year earns roughly SEK 2 million annually, according to Stockholm Exergi.

🎓 Lesson

The pricing and metering layer, not the pipe, is what turns a one-way heating network into a two-way market — prices are set daily and heat is billed like a commodity, which is what lets dozens of unrelated businesses plug into the same system without individual negotiation.

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🏙️ City-wide

FundingStockholm Exergi finances the pipe connection to each supplier; suppliers finance their own on-site heat-exchange equipment and recoup it through monthly heat-sale payments.

📖 Terms in this entry: Smart grid · Adaptive traffic signals · Digital twin

Sources

↗ Stockholm Exergi — Open District Heating FAQOperator's own description of the metering/pricing mechanism, supplier count, connection timeline and the SEK 2M/MW/year payment example.

↗ Celsius Initiative — Open District Heating in Stockholm, SwedenEU-funded case study confirming the 2014 launch and describing supplier examples (e.g. Bahnhof Thule data centre).

↗ UNEP Copenhagen Centre on Energy Efficiency — Open District Heating case studyIndependent case study describing the ODH Call / ODH Spot supply models and network scale.

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Compare this project

🇫🇮 Katri Vala Heat Pump Plant · Helsinki Two ways to add heat: Stockholm buys commercial waste heat into its grid since 2014; Helsinki recovers it from wastewater since 2006. 🇩🇰 AI-Driven Demand Response for Copenhagen's District Heating · Copenhagen Different levers on the same network type: Stockholm buys in outside waste heat; Copenhagen's AI shifts when buildings draw heat. 🇸🇪 GrowSmarter · Stockholm Another verified project from Stockholm.

Explore the wider context

🚦 Asphalt or algorithms 🔌 Smart grid & energy guide 🏙️ Stockholm city profile ⚡ Energy projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Open District Heating: Selling Waste Heat Into the Grid” — Stockholm, Sweden. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/stockholm-open-district-heating/ (last verified 2026-07-28). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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