Orbit – Erith Park

Low-carbon district heating
building

Delivering energy with a reduced
cost and carbon footprint for Orbit – Erith Park

Orbit is one of the UK’s largest housing associations and house builders with more than 40,000 homes across the Midlands, East Anglia and the South East. Orbit provides a range of homes for rent and sale, from market sale and shared ownership to affordable and social rent, as well as independent living with care options for over-55s.

Erith Park is a development designed to have the feel of a community and includes 305 different properties, high standards of architecture and traditional street patterns with enhanced pedestrian links.


The challenge

To provide the community with guaranteed energy provision that also reduces overall carbon footprint and energy costs.

The solution

Working with Orbit, Veolia manages delivery of low-carbon energy, through district heating, for the residents in the Erith Park development.

The district-heating network feeds heat to the homes from the energy centre managed by Veolia’s energy team to ensure residents are supplied with reliable, low-carbon heating. The homes are provided with individually metered heating and hot water from the energy centre and residents receive their heat for radiators and hot water from a connection to the heating network across the development. The energy is transferred to each property through a heat interface unit which takes the place of a gas boiler, and a control panel which allows residents to program their heating and hot water as it is needed.

Within the homes, the consumer interface units (CIU) are linked back to the energy centre which allows data to be extracted for billing and adjusting tariffs. This also allows the operator to see temperatures and faults within the CIUs. Veolia uses a seamless billing system using this technology, which also enables the energy centre operators to interact with the customer through a messaging facility.

Value delivered

By managing energy-efficient heating and hot water from the new CHP-based scheme, it delivers affordable, low-carbon energy for the community and lowers CO2 emissions.

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Veolia UK | Orbit Erith Park case study key figure