Five green heating projects have shared nearly £65 million in government grants from the Green Heat Network Fund.
The awards, managed by Triple Point Heat Networks Investment Management, went to projects that mostly used heat pumps and two had energy storage and other assets included that would allow them to manage their own demand and provide response services to the grid.
At Westland Heath in Suffolk a Taylor Wimpey development won £745,000 to incorporate a community heat hub which is able to provide low/zero carbon heat to family housing developments. The scheme was developed by GTC, Metropolitan and Taylor Wimpey and is expected to become a standardised GTC offering.
The community heat hub will provide heat to up to 950 residential connections and a primary school, with a thermal store that will provide demand side response services to National Grid ESO and the local district network operators (DNO). This approach is expected to be rolled out across numerous new build GTC sites, equating to 95,000 homes.
Andrew White, Metropolitan Managing Director said, “… Our network solution is already better value for house builders and homeowners, compared to each house owning a heat pump.
“The exciting thing is that our solution provides valuable services to enable a smarter electricity grid. The central Heat Hub provides a single exit from the electricity grid. We use thermal stores to reduce grid connection capacity and can add a battery to reduce this further. And we use this demand side response to create more value from grid wholesale and balancing, which will reduce homeowner bills further.”
Lancaster University won over £21 million to fully decarbonise its campus with a low carbon energy centre. The centre will use air source heat pumps, thermal storage and electrical infrastructure works, providing 45 GWh of low carbon heat sufficient to provide heating and hot water for virtually all of the campus. The heat pumps will be supplied by renewable electricity from a new solar farm and an existing wind turbine.
One project uses waste heat from a data centre. That award went to Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC). It won £36 million for commercialisation and construction of a district heat network in west London using the cooling of data centres as a predictable supply of low-grade heat to distribute to a number of energy centres via a plastic “ambient” network. Heating will be delivered to over 10,000 homes and 250,000m2 of commercial space in three London boroughs.
The Mayor of London’s Local Energy Accelerator (LEA) funding programme, which was co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, has also provided almost £400,000 to fund technical expertise to develop the OPDC-led heat network.
The London Borough of Brent won £5.2 million for the initial phase (1.2GWh) of the South Kilburn District Heat Network, which will supply low carbon heat using air source heat pumps combined with back up gas boilers. The heat pumps will be located on the rooftop of an existing property and will supply heat to 34 sites via a 2.79km pipe network, providing heating to 2,900 customers. Subsequent phases will be delivered by a second energy centre.
Watford Community Housing, a not-for-profit housing association with 5,700 homes, will receive £1.8 million to replace an old gas district heating system with a ground source heat pump. It will serve residents in 252 apartments across 6 blocks.