District Heating Main

District Heating Systems are extremely common in larger building complexes such as large Hospital sites where Wards and departments can be widely distributed. Systems such as this utilise large boilerhouses situated either in a central location or on the perimeter of the site. In these cases, the fuel used for firing the boilers is delivered by oil or coal delivery vehicles or by external Gas mains. Hot water is heated and circulated throughout the site via a network of flow and return pipework. At individual blocks, the main circulation is either shunted through a blending or BIBO station or heat is transferred by means of a calorifier or plate heat exchanger.

Systems such as this are also widely used in over 90 localised district heating schemes in Glasgow, where relatively small blocks or groups of dwellings are served with heating and domestic hot water services. These have in some cases been in common use for many years.

The concept of using District Heating methods such as these for the purpose of distributing heat energy around a community, district or more widely throughout a town or city is however relatively new or novel in this country.

However District Heating has been used in this way for many years in Europe and in particular is very common in Scandinavian Countries. In Denmark more than half of all homes are heated from District or Community heating systems. One could not fail to be impressed by the scale of the waste-to-energy plants and the associated pipe networks that can be seen in use and being extended in Cities such as Copenhagen. There, the schemes are now in mandatory use and hospitals and most other public buildings.

In the United Kingdom, use of such systems has not been very widespread. Mention has already been made of those relatively small schemes in use in Glasgow. However there have been some very successful, large schemes in England,in the centre of Sheffield and in Nottingham for example where they are used to heat commercial and public buildings as well as some residential buildings. There are also numerous examples of small scale developments. More recently, the community heating system being installed in Shetland to heat the town of Lerwick is an example of a visionary, successful and extensive adoption of the technology.

However we have found that the wider ustilisation of District heating to cover larger communities is not at all common.This appears to be principally due to the insistence of Authorities of very conservative accountancy practices where the insistence is on short payback periods when calculating and comparing investment decisions.

However the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 and the subsequent International agreements is tending to force a re-think of such practices and it is likely that climate change levys and other pressures are likely to bring other considerations to bear.

In the case of Oatlands which we have under consideration, the opportunity to regenerate the district by first undertaking the major de-contamination of the site to remove pollution from past bad practices and then installing the Infrastructure comprising in part of a community heating distribution network is one which should not be missed.

Definition INFRASTRUCTURE

--considered as a determinant of economic growth.



The capital cost of installing such a pipework system in advance of the construction of the dwellings or in parallel with building work would undoubtedly prove to be a cost saving measure.

The economics of building such a community heating network are such that from the start, a large number of participants in the shape of householders would be needed to ensure that the system were viable. Hence our firm recommendation to increase the housing density within the district.



The capital cost of a network of approximately 2.5 km could be shared or apportioned over the 2500 dwellings which we have suggested for the Oatlands redevelopment. Thereby the increased cost for such dwellings would be no more than about 1.5% in value. Such an increase compares very favourably with the widely accepted 1.3 to 2.0% increase resulting from the adoption of the energy saving construction methods necessary when building houses for very low energy demand.

External Reference Links:

1. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/cru/resfinds/drf31-00.htm
   Monitoring and evaluation of Local authority energy efficiency schemes.
2. http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/eats-operations/waste/wte/district.html
   District Heating Network in Shetland.
3. http://www.udg.org.uk/ej/udq/udq.html
   Quarterly Journal of the Urban Design Group.
4. http://www.oxford.i-way.co.uk/city-heat/home.html#home
   City Heat.
5. http://www.logstor.com/
   Logstor Ror insulated pipe systems.
6. http://www.askBRE.co.uk/insight
   BRE and the Built Environment.
7. http://www.energy.rochester.edu/uk/chpa/commheat/
   CHPA (Combined Heat and Power Association).

Return to main Proposals page