ENERGY SERVICE BUSINESS MODELS: ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORKS AND MARKET INTEGRATION ENABLED BY THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE

Thermal energy storage as a service (TESaaS) provides a cost-effective flexibility solution for district heating systems by enabling temporal decoupling of heat production and consumption, improving the integration of variable renewable energy sources, and creating new market revenue opportunities. This paper develops a comprehensive framework for TESaaS deployment by defining structural storage schemes, including centralized, distributed, and seasonal configurations, and by extending conventional producer cost functions to explicitly account for TES-oriented operating regimes, storage efficiencies, and associated loss mechanisms. In addition, the study introduces quantitative indicators for optimal storage placement and loss allocation within district heating networks. These components are integrated into an optimization framework that captures the interactions between technical constraints, economic performance, and market design. The framework is applied to representative district heating configurations to evaluate the impact of TESaaS on producer costs, network heat losses, peak generation requirements, and storage service pricing. The results demonstrate that TES deployment leads to meaningful reductions in annualized production costs, enhances operational flexibility, and supports the development of service-based business models that lower barriers to adoption. The paper concludes that TESaaS significantly strengthens local energy system resilience and decarbonization potential, while emphasizing the need for carefully designed tariff mechanisms and effective market integration to ensure efficient revenue stacking and equitable cost allocation among stakeholders. Bibl. 44, Tab. 4, Fig. 9.