Archive for category: Energy Efficiency

Bespoke-designed, prefabricated heating equipment provides low disruption solution for high-performance heat at social housing estate

Wakefield and District Housing (WDH) has improved the reliability and efficiency of the heating and hot water service at its Smirthwaite housing estate with the installation of eight new Remeha Gas 220 Ace boilers using a Remeha prefabricated cascade arrangement.

One the UK’s largest social housing providers, WDH is committed to excellence and performance. Heating and hot water are critical services for residents, so ensuring that the system operates reliably is a top priority for the WDH technical services team. In line with its wider sustainability commitments, WDH also works to mitigate rising energy costs wherever possible for its tenants.

The Smirthwaite Estate in Normanton consists of 192 two-bedroom maisonettes, 70 three-bedroom houses and 14 one-bedroom bungalows. Previously, three 25-year-old boilers had served two district heating circuits which in turn feed heat interface units (HIUs) within the individual dwellings to provide heating and hot water services.

When the old boilers came to the end of their serviceable life, the WDH technical services team installed temporary plant to maintain the service while they evaluated the feasible options.

A major concern was to avoid disruption wherever possible for the residents. This included keeping downtime to a minimum and avoiding the need to enter properties.

“We were keen to explore the use of renewable technologies, either to replace or assist new gas-fired boilers,” said Stephen Dumbrell, WDH’s Assistant Mechanical Services Manager. “Given the nature of the existing heating system at Smirthwaite and therefore the possible limitations, we asked Rob Wilson at Building Services Solutions to carry out an appraisal of the low carbon options.”

The findings of the report ruled out air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps and biomass as practical alternatives at the estate, as consultant Rob Wilson explained.

“For a number of reasons – including space constraints, insufficient power supply, noise, the existing distribution system and operating temperatures – these technologies had to be disregarded as viable options,” he said.

His recommendation was to install modular, energy-efficient replacement boilers with a Plate Heat Exchanger to deliver long-term improved heating reliability while reducing energy consumption and carbon and NOx emissions.

“This was the most practical, cost-effective and reliable approach to improve outcomes for residents on the Smirthwaite estate,” Rob continued. “It met all of WDH’s requirements, providing a more energy-efficient heating and hot water service, minimising disruption to residents, and enabling easy future maintenance by their inhouse technical team.”

Rob specified installing eight Remeha Gas 220 Ace 300 in a back-to-back arrangement using a Remeha off-site fabricated cascade system with a Plate Heat Exchanger (PHEX). Remeha is part of Baxi Commercial Solutions.

“I’ve used the Remeha pre-assembled rig systems before,” Rob commented. “The products, design and customer service from the Baxi Commercial Solutions team are all excellent. WDH’s technical services team are also familiar with Remeha products and have a great relationship with the sales and technical support teams, so it was a logical selection.”

Working with Rob and WDH, the Baxi Commercial Solutions team prepared CAD and 3D drawings of the boiler cascade arrangement bespoke to the design parameters and integrated specially sized pump sets and a PHEX into the design. The PHEX was recommended to separate the new boilers from the existing district heating distribution system and protect them from any debris, corrosion or poor water quality.

In addition to the boilers, pumps and PHEX, the packaged solution included a pressurisation unit, a dosing pot and an expansion vessel.

The detailed CAD and 3D drawings provided early visualisation of the layout. Through subsequent collaborative discussions with the group, revisions were considered and implemented to reach a final design that met all the site constraints and requirements. Production then took place in a factory environment, with comprehensive end-of-line testing.

The equipment was delivered to site in clearly numbered pallets with a reference drawing for guidance. The WDH technical services team then bolted the boilers together and connected them to the existing system.

“It is very unusual for an inhouse team to be able to carry out a project of this scale,” said Stephen. “One of the many benefits of using the rig was that it provided a good structure for our engineers,” he explained. “It avoided the need to size all the individual components and, as no welding was required, saved a significant amount of installation time.”

The switch to the new boilers took around four hours, allowing WDH to achieve their key goal for minimal downtime and disruption to residents.

“The whole process was seamless,” Stephen added. “It says a lot that the residents weren’t even aware that we were refurbishing the heating system!”

Jason Male was one of the WDH engineers on the project. So how did he find working on the installation?

“This was a great project to be involved with and everything ran very smoothly,” Jason said. “The rig is outstanding and looks really impressive,” he continued. “The support we received from the Baxi team throughout was top notch. They were brilliant to work with and really helpful – we couldn’t have asked for better!”

On both an operational and aesthetic level, the outcome is ticking all the boxes.

“The plant room has been completely transformed,” Stephen continued. “We now have a very well organised plant room that makes the best use of space and provides good accessibility to all the boilers for future maintenance to optimise efficiency and reliability.”

Commissioning was carried out by Baxi Commercial Services engineers who safety tested the installation in conjunction with the WDH site team and control specialist.

Baxi Commercial Services will also provide WDH’s technical services team with onsite training on the new boilers to ensure ongoing high performance.

WDH are anticipating a considerable reduction in energy consumption moving forward from the more energy-efficient equipment and design. There is also the expectation of welcome operational cost savings from the more efficient system with the removal of expensive breakdown callouts.

“It’s a great system and a fantastic achievement. We’re delighted with the service we have received throughout from Baxi Commercial Solutions – and the results,” Stephen concluded.

Martyn Shaw, Executive Director of Technical Services at WDH, said: “I am extremely proud of what we have achieved. Our teams have gone over and above to overcome a complex issue, showing dedication, innovation and due diligence to get the job done well for our customers.

“The simple fact that the residents at Smirthwaite saw little or no disruption during the transition to the new system, is a testament to the in-house talent we have at WDH. The system will help us to achieve our aim of creating better, more sustainable places to live.”

The fully-modulating Remeha Gas 220 Ace series is available in 160 kW, 200 kW, 250 kW and 300 kW outputs with cascade options. The Gas 220 Ace delivers higher-than-average gross efficiencies of up to 98% with low NOx emissions. It is supplied with onboard time and temperature controls, with direct connection to a Building Management System provided as standard to maximise heating efficiency.

CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION FROM REMEHA

 

Tokamak Energy has demonstrated a transformative magnet protection technology that improves the commercial viability of fusion power plants.  This next generation technology delivers higher performance than alternative magnet systems. 

Results from the latest tests validate a revolutionary approach to scaling up high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets, which are highly resilient to plasma disruptions.  The technology, known as “partial insulation”, allows the magnets to be built and operated at power plant size and provides a simpler alternative to traditional superconducting magnet protection systems.  It therefore enhances and accelerates the commercial viability of fusion power.

“For the first time, this latest test gives fusion developers an option for a new design of superconducting magnet that will be resistant to damage, reducing the cost and complexity of damage mitigation systems and the threat of downtime.  The world needs energy that is clean, secure, cheap and globally deployable, and the magnets Tokamak Energy is developing will enable this future.  Tokamak Energy’s two world leading core technologies – the spherical tokamak and HTS magnets – are central to the company’s mission to develop economic fusion in compact power plants,” said Chris Kelsall, CEO of Tokamak Energy.

Tokamaks use magnets to contain and isolate a plasma so that it can reach the high temperatures at which fusion occurs.  High magnetic fields are necessary for tokamaks to contain the superheated fuel, and higher magnetic fields enable a smaller tokamak.  High temperature superconductors can create these much stronger magnetic fields and so are important for commercial fusion power.

Building on this success, the Tokamak Energy team is currently manufacturing a new test facility and demonstration system with a full set of magnets.  This will test the interaction of all the HTS magnets and validate their use within a full tokamak system for the first time.  The new magnet system is scheduled for testing in 2022.

Robert Slade, Advanced Technology Applications Director at Tokamak Energy, said:

“This impressive demonstration of partial insulation technology opens the door to a new frontier in magnet technology, enabling the novel technology we have developed for our spherical tokamaks to be utilized in a wide range of emerging applications that need high field compact HTS magnets.”

The full results of the magnet test campaign have been presented by Senior HTS Magnet Engineer, Bas van Nugteren, at this year’s European Conference on Applied Superconductivity (EUCAS 2021) – (see video link below). The benefits of partial insulation for a fusion scale tokamak feature in the recently published peer reviewed roadmap for fusion magnet technology in the Superconductor Science and Technology journal.

About Tokamak Energy

Tokamak Energy is a leading global commercial fusion energy company based near Oxford, UK.  The company is developing the fusion power plant of tomorrow while commercialising the tech applications of today.

Tokamak Energy is pursuing fusion through the combined development of spherical tokamaks along with high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets.

In the ST-40 fusion prototype, Tokamak Energy has developed the most advanced compact spherical tokamak in the world – a key enabler of commercial fusion.  Plans are underway for the ST-40 to operate at 100m degree plasma in 2021, which will be a key milestone for commercial fusion and the first privately funded fusion module to reach this landmark globally.

Tokamak Energy received five US Department of Energy grants in 2020, creating partnerships with leading expertise in the US National Laboratory System.  The company is partnering with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to develop the ST-40.  It has also received a £10m grant from the UK Government as part of investment under the Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) programme.

Tokamak Energy is working with CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, on high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets in developing a proprietary technology that will scale to the large magnets necessary for fusion power modules.  HTS magnets also have applications for particle accelerators, aerospace and for several other industrial sectors.

The company, founded in 2009 as a spin-off from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, currently employs a growing team of over 180 people with talent from the UK and experts from around the world.  It combines world leading scientific, engineering, industrial and commercial capabilities.  The company has more than 50 families of patent applications and has raised over £100m of private investment.

Once realised, fusion energy will be clean, economic, and globally deployable – a key enabler for meeting international climate policy goals.

www.tokamakenergy.co.uk

 

The government’s response to its 2019 Future Homes Standard consultation gives us a clearer picture of what the homes of 2050 might look like. But is it a workable vision? And does it go far enough? Nick Gander and Rod Davies of far-infrared heating specialists Energy Carbon give their take.

In January, as millions of people adjusted to life under the third national coronavirus lockdown, the government quietly released a document with sweeping implications for the future of UK construction.
The Future Homes Standard is Whitehall’s attempt to dramatically reduce the environmental damage caused by Britain’s houses and its housebuilding sector, as part of broader efforts to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.  Its aim is simple, but far-reaching. It’s designed to cut the carbon produced by the average new-build house by between 75 and 80% in the coming years – something that would make a huge contribution to that quest for net-zero.

In October 2019, the government put its initial proposals to the public and interested experts in the form of a consultation. It was the response to that consultation that they released at the start of this year.
Originally, ministers had intended to introduce interim measures in 2020 to strengthen Building Regulations as a stepping-stone to the full Future Homes Standard. These measures would aim to cut the carbon emissions of the average new-build by 31%.  Unsurprisingly, given the vast disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this was postponed.  In its consultation response, however, the government announced that this interim phase would begin in 2021. Details will be finalised by December 2021, before coming into force officially in June 2022.

The wheels starting to turn?
We also got some much-needed clarification about exactly what the measures would entail.  With its interim ‘stepping-stone’ to the full Future Homes Standard, the government’s aim is to ensure that new-built homes are not installed with fossil fuel heating after 2025, and won’t require further retrofitting to make them fit for 2050.  The government is also set to close the loophole that’s previously allowed builders to only have to meet the energy efficiency standards that were in place when a development first started, even if those standards change in the meantime.

From now on, rules will apply to individual buildings, not whole developments.  These are all extremely welcome moves. It feels like, finally, the wheels of the urgently-needed net-zero transition are starting to turn.  However, there are aspects of the government’s proposals we’re less impressed with.

No magic bullet
In their consultation response, ministers explicitly say that “low carbon heating systems will be integral to the specification of the Future Homes Standard”.  However, they then go on to say that “we anticipate that heat pumps will become the primary heating technology for new homes”.  At Energy Carbon, we’ve long been arguing that there’s no magic bullet solution to low-carbon heating, and that in 2050, we’re likely to draw on a variety of different technologies to help us heat homes both sustainably and efficiently. We believe that air-source and ground-source heat pumps have their place – but they come with their own issues.

The first relates to their longevity. Heat pumps aren’t just very expensive, they require increasingly expensive annual maintenance visits, and even then, a heat pump product installed today is likely to need replacing a number of times between now and 2050.  That means a huge amount more embodied carbon (a yardstick of sustainability that the government short-sightedly aren’t using as part of the Future Homes Standard as it stands) – and many heat pump products use refrigerants that themselves contribute to global warming when they’re released into the atmosphere.  What’s more, heat pumps are extremely complex products – meaning any maintenance or replacement work requires the services of specialist engineers, who, for the moment at least, are very few and far between.  We therefore believe that the government is being very short-sighted by presenting this one heating technology as the solution to a complex problem – a problem likely to need all sorts of different systems to properly address.

The case for infra-red
So far in any of its documentation relating to the Future Homes Standard, the government is yet to mention the huge potential of our own area of expertise – far-infrared.
Infrared refers to a division of the electromagnetic spectrum. Within that division, there are three types of infra-red radiation: near infrared, mid infrared and far-infrared – and it’s far-infrared that’s by far the most beneficial for heating homes and its occupants.  In fact, it’s the exact same frequency of light called ‘the light of life’ generated by the sun, invisible to the naked eye, but capable of warming us directly.
Far-infrared radiation warms all the surfaces and objects in a room, rather than the air – and those surfaces and objects then go on to radiate heat themselves.  The embodied heat gathered in these areas slowly releases back into the room, letting occupants turn down the thermostat.  This in turn allows for a very fast reaction time to perfectly control the room temperature.  Its fast reaction times mean occupiers feel the benefits within minutes of the thermostat switching back on – saving energy, and cutting carbon emissions.

We believe it can make a major contribution to the collective effort to reach zero carbon by 2050 – and we call on the government to seriously consider promoting its use as part of the Future Homes Standard.

 

www.energycarbon.co.uk