District heating (DH) has become a common strategy for new developments to reduce carbon in order to satisfy planners and meet building regs. But despite its prevalence, in the UK we frequently get district heating wrong.
Most of what we do at work relates to DH in one way or another. At Insite we provide meter reading and customer care to several thousand people on district heating schemes. We take residents’ calls, help clients set tariffs and assess efficiency data, among other things. At Fontenergy (one of Insite’s two parent companies) we’ve project managed the design and install of DH networks and we operate centralised plant for ourselves and others. In our efforts to get DH right, we once even imported one of the best DH contractors from Denmark and worked with them to install a network in North London.
When it’s done right, DH is a cost-effective strategy for delivering low carbon heat. What’s more, it’s an essential technology for decarbonising heat in the UK (mainly because relying entirely on the theoretical decarbonisation of the grid in order to electrify heat is nuts, but that’s another post). The reality is we need DH, but often we don’t do it right.
carbon limited 