Bridgend County Borough Council is tendering for the detailed design phase of an innovative heat network.
In the project Marubeni Europower Ltd is developing a green hydrogen production facility (called HyBont) drawing on new local solar PV and wind generation via private wire and sleeving. The hydrogen produced will be used as fuel for the transportation sector, such as fuel cell vehicles.
The procurement follows a feasibility study in 2022 produced by Buro Happold, which identified the preferred solution to be a heat network that will draw green hydrogen and waste heat directly from the electrolyser to serve a heat network serving a primary school, college and leisure centre complex approximately 1.2km away, all owned by Bridgend County Borough Council.
Waste heat recovered from the electrolyser will be used to meet the baseload heat demand on the heat network, with hydrogen boilers providing top-up heat during peak times and when waste heat is not available, due to the intermittency of renewable energy supply to electrolyser.
This innovative project will fully decarbonise the heating of these buildings and make use of a heat source that would otherwise be considered waste and lost.
Bridgend has been awarded funding from the Heat Network Development Unit (HNDU) to undertake the detailed project development phase study to determine whether the heat network opportunity is sufficiently viable to take through to commercialisation and delivery.
The project kicked off with a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2022 between Bridgend and Marubeni to jointly work together to research and develop a green hydrogen project.