The Work has been performed to, and in cooperation with Vetlanda Energi och teknik AB.

District heating for commercial purpose started in the USA in 1877. Today the network has grown into big and complex systems, which demand maintenance and service to keep up the security of the delivery. When a district heating network expand, it becomes difficult to perform reliable calculations. For this purposes there are a few suppliers who design and deliver systems for documentation and calculation of district heating networks.

Vetlanda Energi och Teknik AB is in the position where they must get a system for documentation and calculation for district heating, and therefore they need a basis to get a system. The target is to write a requirement specification that will follow the basis.

The Swedish market has been inventoried, and suitable systems have been selected. There is very little information printed about documentation and calculation for district heating networks. Mostly information, in this issue, comes from suppliers and users. The systems and their functions have been compared to each other. Together with the demands from Vetlanda Energi och Teknik AB the specification has been written.

The biggest and the most visible difference between the systems, is the structure. The systems are built on different platforms like AutoCad and MapInfo. The systems also make a difference in what way the functions are settled up. Some systems have all their functions in the same program and some other systems split up their functions and create different modules. This is affecting the user friendlyness and the design of the functions. The amount and kind of information that can be documented is about the same, yet with some important differences.

Which system to choose is much depended on the size of the organisation. A bigger company with more staff and more competence can choose a more difficult system while a smaller company maybe have to pick an easier system so that the system really come in use.