England’s Largest District Ground Source System Breaks New Ground
- Social Housing
- 2 min read
400 flats over eight tower blocks in the London borough of Enfield will be retrofitted with Shoebox (https://www.kensacontracting.com/products/shoebox-series/) heat pumps manufactured by Kensa Contracting’s sister company Kensa Heat Pumps, and connected to the largest collection of ‘district’ arrays of its kind.
Planned for completion in October 2018, the heating upgrade will result in residents’ energy bills reducing by 30-50%.
Dr. Matthew Trewhella, Kensa’s Contracting Director comments:
This project is an excellent example of how district heating can be rolled out using the shared ground loop system architecture.
One of the great strengths of this system type is its flexibility and scalability. Shared ground loop systems can be featured in developments of just two properties (micro-district) whilst this project clearly demonstrates how the concept can be scaled up to much larger systems.
Not only do ground source heat pumps provide the lowest cost heat, they also deliver substantial carbon savings, and landlords benefit from the exceptionally low servicing and maintenance costs.
The Shared Ground Loop Array at Enfield will feature 16 shared ground loop systems serving the eight tower blocks. Each system will typically consist of clusters of eight boreholes serving individual heat pumps installed within the flats of half a tower block.
This system architecture allows each resident to select their own preferred energy supplier to access the best available electricity tariff. The shared nature of the ground array design also reduces drilling costs – typically the most cost-prohibitive aspect of a ground source heat pump installation – and ensures funding through the Energy Company Obligations (https://www.kensacontracting.com/grants-incentives/eco/) (ECO) Scheme as well as the Government’s Non-Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (https://www.kensacontracting.com/grants-incentives/non-domestic-rhi/) (RHI – this scheme has closed), securing Enfield Council quarterly payments for 20 years.
With typically two thirds of the heating sourced from the ground, the borehole installations will provide an infrastructure which will deliver an affordable heat and hot water solution for the Enfield tower blocks for generations.
Drilling of the boreholes has already commenced with one site’s groundworks completed in time for the new year.
Kensa Heat Pumps will be sharing project progress updates on their blog https://www.kensacontracting.com/knowledge-hub/ (https://www.kensacontracting.com/knowledge-hub/).
