New homes in London to benefit from low carbon, energy-efficient heating, hot water & electricity
The focus to deliver energy efficient district heating in London has now been expanded with a combined heat and power based scheme that will serve 305 new homes in a new housing development at Erith, London Borough of Bexley. The scheme for Orbit South Housing Association will see Veolia operate and maintain the Combined Heat and Power, CHP, based heat network that will deliver low carbon energy efficient heating, hot water and electricity to the community.
Erith Park is a development that has been designed to have the feel of a community and includes a variety of different properties, high standards of architecture and traditional street patterns with enhanced pedestrian links. The modern apartments are energy efficient and comply with Level 4 in the Code for Sustainable Homes.
The district heating network feeds heat to the homes from the energy centre which Veolia’s energy team will manage to ensure residents are supplied with reliable low carbon heating. Within the homes the Consumer Interface Units, CIU, are linked back to the energy centre which allows the data to be extracted for billing and adjusting tariffs - this also allows the operator to see temperatures and faults within the CIUs. Veolia will implement a seamless billing system using this technology which also enables the energy centre operators to interact with the customer through a messaging facility.
Pat Gilroy, COO Industrial Customers UK, Country Director Ireland from Veolia, explains how the CHP system will benefit the Erith development: “It was important that this new scheme used an energy-efficient and sustainable way of meeting CO2 reduction targets and deliver energy security. Effective management of the CHP system and the heat network that serves the homes will provide customers with their heating and hot water needs, and at the same time minimise carbon emissions”.
Currently the energy centre is based on two CHP units and to allow for expansion of the development connection points have been built in for additional boilers and CHP. The heating network uses individual radial circuits to each apartment building which has the benefit of keeping the system efficiency at its optimum through the block handover phase.
CHP plants work by effectively capturing and using the heat generated as part of the electricity generation process. This makes a typical CHP more than twice as energy efficient as separate grid generation which reduces the carbon emissions from provision of heat and electricity.