Segment
District heating or cooling
Defer pipe upgrades, integrate waste heat, balance grids at the edge.
District heating networks are hitting two walls at once: customer demand peaks faster than the production plant can ramp, and the pipework that connects them is increasingly the bottleneck for further expansion. Cartesian places thermal storage at the edge of the grid, at substations, at large customers, or close to waste-heat producers to buffer peaks, integrate low-grade renewable and recovered heat, and let utilities postpone infrastructure upgrades by years.
District networks face peak demand, pipe constraints and decarbonisation pressure. Cartesian acts as a distributed buffer at the edge of the grid.
Common use cases
- Expand peak cooling delivered in district cooling
- Waste heat integration
- Customer-side storage
Typical outcomes
- Higher renewable share
- Connect more customers on same network
- Increase peak cooling capacity
Why now
Common pain points in district heating or cooling
District networks carry a sharp morning and evening peak in heating, with a long shoulder during the day. Distributed buffering at substations lets you run the production plant more optimized and capture more low-cost heat.
- Pipe upgrades cost millions and disrupt customers for months
- Variable renewable sources don't match peaks in customer demand
- Waste-heat producers exist nearby but lack a way to time-shift
- Substation peaks limit the number of new connections
Indicative sizing
What a typical substation looks like
- substation
- 1 MW–5 MW
- thermal storage
- 5 MWh
- infrastructure upgrades
- Postpone
Recommended solutions for district heating or cooling
Common questions
Got questions about thermal storage?
From PCM chemistry and lifetime to indoor vs outdoor installs and typical payback — the answers are in the full FAQ.
Read all questionsWhat is thermal energy storage?
The term is used when storing energy as heat or cold, which can be released at a later stage. The heat or cold is usually stored when energy is cheap and then released when the heating or cooling demand is at a peak or the cost of energy is high.
What is PCM?
PCM means Phase Change Material and refers to any material that changes state, for example from solid to liquid, when reaching a certain temperature. This phase change enables large amounts of energy to be absorbed or released. Water is one PCM, storing cold at zero degrees Celsius by changing phase to ice. Cartesian uses a wide variety of other materials, such as bio-based waxes, to store heat or cold at different temperatures.
Is the Thermal Box and the PCM flammable?
For applications with HVAC systems, Cartesian's Thermal Box is not considered flammable. While some PCM might be flammable when they reach temperatures above 100 °C or more, the Thermal Box is designed to eliminate any risks of reaching flammability conditions in operations.
Are PCMs safe?
Cartesian offers only safe PCMs and primarily uses bio-based PCMs in the Thermal Box. The PCM will stay in the Thermal Box for its whole lifetime and is not consumed during operation. The Thermal Box is also designed to avoid any risk of PCM leakage.
Let's build the smarter grid