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Archive for the ‘district heating’ Category

why we’ll share Open Data

Posted in Big Data, DECC, district heating, engineering, Open Data on April 18, 2016| 3 Comments »

Operational data from onsite energy systems (like heat networks) is extremely hard to come by. Very few people manage to get hold of it, and those who have it rarely share.

What are the typical loads in dwellings? What are the network losses? Do customers all demand heating at the same time or are demand events spread out?

Who knows? Engineers don’t stick around and find out how their designs work in real life; ESCOs hold their cards close to their chests; and many landlords fail to extract or make use of their own data.

This dearth of data has hamstrung the industry at a time when it should be racing ahead. It’s one of the biggest reasons why, when it comes to energy performance, we’re just not getting better fast enough.

In late 2014, when DECC put out a call for proposals to improve heat networks, we saw a chance to unlock some of these data silos and accelerate development of the heat market.

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£300m gets us off the island

Posted in DECC, district heating on April 4, 2016| 3 Comments »

gilliganAndskipperIn a shock move, last autumn the chancellor allocated £300m to heat networks to be spent over the next 5 years. This funding presents a golden opportunity, but there’s a real danger it will be spent delivering more of what we’ve already got.

Largely driven by planning policy, the district heat market is currently made up of tens of thousands of small networks, each on its own little island with few connections to bigger sources of low carbon heat. Poorly delivered and rarely checked, many of these networks suffer from dismal efficiency.

As I pointed out in my last post, the industry is busy grappling with just getting the basics right: reducing heat losses from networks and protecting end customers. But time is short: the UK’s looming carbon targets mean that even at this early stage in market development, we have to stay focused on the endgame of CO2 reduction.

So how should DECC spend the money? Here are my suggestions:

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heat just got real

Posted in climate change, Code of Practice, DECC, district heating, renewable energy, tagged , on March 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

SJGR

The chancellor has allocated £300m to heat networks. What happens next matters – a lot.

When I started working in the low carbon sector in the early noughties, it felt like we had all the time in the world. You could tinker about with gizmos like earth pipes and building-mounted wind turbines and feel like you were doing good. Hockey stick carbon graphs seemed a bit abstract and rarely got people’s blood pumping.

The intervening years have flashed past. Now in 2016, Governments, businesses and communities around the world have woken up to the scale of the threat from climate change. Pressure to act is mounting.

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answering Bill Watts’ awkward questions

Posted in chp, district heating, engineering, ESCO on October 29, 2015| 5 Comments »

Last week, Bill Watts at M&E practice Max Fordham wrote a passionate rant against CHP and heat networks on the Construction Manager website.

The crux of Bill’s message is that real world losses on new build projects are higher than losses calculated using manufacturers’ specs and SAP. How much higher? Bill’s not sure – he says that only ESCOs know how well or how poorly heat networks are working. But in any case “much higher than we’ve been led to believe.”

A few days after the original article appeared, Construction Manager ran a follow up piece in which people from the building industry try to rebut Bill’s argument. In general the respondents make the case that CHP and DH have an important role to play in decarbonising heat, with several highlighting that the Heat Network Code of Practice should improve the performance of new networks.

But in my view the industry respondents missed the key point.

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where isn’t innovation happening?

Posted in chp, climate change, DECC, district heating, energy, engineering, tagged on October 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

In the previous post, I highlighted where innovation is taking place in the UK district heating market. In this post, I’d like to flag up some important areas where innovation isn’t happening – but really should be. Below are a few of the biggest blocks in the market, where change is desperately needed but so far not forthcoming.

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where’s the innovation in the district heat market?

Posted in Big Data, DECC, district heating, energy, engineering, machine learning, tagged on August 25, 2015| 1 Comment »

I’ve been invited to do a short talk at a UK Trade and Industry event for investors in heat networks, giving an overview of innovation in the sector. This gives me an excuse to do some research and summarise it in this post – and also an opportunity to ask readers what I’ve missed.

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If I were Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

Posted in climate change, district heating, energy, feed in tariff, Green Deal, other stuff, private wire, PV, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, wind turbines, zero carbon, tagged , on April 30, 2015| 7 Comments »

pllWith the election looming, it’s time to nail your colours to the mast. Ain’t no purdah round here, so here’s my contribution…

If I were Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my mission would be to put us firmly on the path to zero carbon heat and electricity. Only by doing this will we meet our legally binding promise to decarbonise the UK economy and mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

As you’ll see, I also wouldn’t get too hung up on where my remit officially stopped.

To get back on the path, we’ll need to radically improve energy efficiency, develop our ability to shift electricity demand, enable renewables to meet the bulk of our electricity requirements, and rapidly develop our district heating market.

First: ramp up energy efficiency

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Meter-gate! What happened next.

Posted in district heating, engineering, tagged , , on March 11, 2015| 6 Comments »

In January I wrote a post about the fact that, contrary to expectations, no meters will be retrofitted under the new Heat Network Regulations. This is because the assumptions in DECC’s meter viability tool mean almost no install will pass the financial viability test.

After hitting publish on that post, things moved pretty fast.

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in the real world, meters ARE viable under EED

Posted in district heating, tagged , , on January 9, 2015| 3 Comments »

In the last post, I flagged up the fact that no heat meters will be fitted to homes on heat networks under the Energy Efficiency Directive. This is because, no matter what inputs you feed into DECC’s calculation tool, the output is always the same: heat meters aren’t viable.

As a result, around 300k homes with unmetered connections will continue to pay a flat fee regardless of how much heat they use, robbing them of control over spending and giving them no incentive to save.

In this post, I’ll show that heat meters are viable in a typical block of flats. I’ll also show how a single unrealistic assumption in the DECC calculation tool pretty much guarantees that the computer says no, every time.

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how many old homes will get heat meters under the Energy Efficiency Directive? None.

Posted in district heating, tagged , , on January 5, 2015| 2 Comments »

That’s right. None. Zero. Zilch.

This is because, using DECC’s calculation tool, there are no cases in which the retrofit of residential heat meters is considered “financially viable.” No matter what numbers you feed into the calculation tool, the output for homes on heat networks is always the same:

Heat meters are NOT viable on an average building(s) of this type.

This means that the EU Energy Efficiency Directive has just been rendered toothless. Huge savings from behaviour change and efficiency improvements will not be realised. The 75% of people on heat networks with unmetered connections will continue to pay a flat fee regardless of how much heat they use, robbing them of control over spending and giving them no incentive to save. At the same time, heat network operators will be forced to engage in needless calculations and reporting, the outcome of which was decided before they even downloaded the calculation tool.

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