District Heating Technologies: Is it Chance for CHP Plants in Variable and Competitive Operation Conditions?

District heating system with power generation is integrated in the electricity system since combined heat and power (CHP) plants are used for heat supply. Nowadays, the changes happen in the electricity system and conventional CHP plant operation. They are caused by wide integration of renewable energy sources (RES) in energy production process, feed-in tariffs for RES, the implementation of market mechanisms, and the incremented requirement in energy efficiency and flexibility of power plants. This creates new opportunities and conditions for district heating (DH) and power system cooperation though the use of DH flexible technologies, i.e., power-to-heat (P2H) technologies (electric boilers (EB) and heat pumps). The use of P2H technologies is limited and they are not costs-efficient due to electricity tariff formed components. Two Targets of EB use at power plant are evaluated, omitting these components, to show the usefulness and significant of these technologies for conventional generation.