ASHRAE Ireland is proud to share that our President-Elect, Alireza Etemad, attended and spoke at the 12th International Conference on Smart Energy Systems (SESAAU2026) in Aalborg, Denmark, on 22 and 23 September 2026. 🇩🇰
The conference is hosted by Aalborg University and Energy Cluster Denmark and is one of the world’s most important gatherings on district energy. It began as a spin-off from the 4DH Research Centre on 4th Generation District Heating.
Today it brings together academia, industry, consultancies and utilities to discuss how energy systems can move to renewables. Its focus spans low-temperature district heating, energy efficiency, electrification and the integration of heating with electricity, cooling, industry and transport. The 2025 edition welcomed 425 participants from 30 countries.
At the conference, Alireza presented his research on machine learning surrogate modelling for hydronic balancing in buildings connected to heat pumps. The work looks at low-temperature heat networks, where each building upgrades low-grade heat with its own heat pump, so decisions made inside the building directly affect network performance. The study
compares conventional thermostatic radiator valves with pressure-independent control valves to see how radiator control affects the heat pump’s energy use, cost and carbon emissions. Testing every design and operating scenario with detailed physics-based simulation would take far too long. The team therefore combined a dynamic building and heat pump model with machine learning surrogate models, which are fast stand-ins for the full model that can evaluate thousands of scenarios in seconds.
This research was the result of an international collaboration between Ireland, the United States and Belgium, led by Alireza. It brought together University College Dublin and the University of Limerick in Ireland, Pennsylvania State University in the United States, and the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
You can read more in the extended version of this research, published in Applied Thermal Engineering: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359431126032175
Congratulations, Alireza, on representing Irish research and our chapter on the international stage! 👏
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