Abstract
The importance of strategic energy planning in municipalities continues to increase due to the current challenges in environmental and climate protection and is therefore an important topic at present. The new German Heat Planning Act introduces an instrument for strategic planning of the heat transition at local level. The key point in heat planning is the designation of heat supply areas. Therefore, the partitioning of municipalities is relevant e.g. for heat routing planning so that areas for heating networks can be defined. This paper presents two approaches to the partitioning of municipalities. The first approach is based on Max-P Clustering, the second on Equal-Size Spectral Clustering. Both approaches provide useful results with advantages and disadvantages depending on the application. Equal-size spectral clustering basically defines smaller areas, whereas Max-P clustering defines more spatially bound areas.