As the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) opens to applications, Kensa Contracting is urging local authorities and housing associations in England to act now and bid for a portion of the £160m available in 2021/22 to install highly efficient low carbon ground source heat pumps to tackle climate change and
A pioneering smart renewable heating scheme in Oxford, part of the £41m Energy Superhub Oxford project, has been given the green light to proceed following lockdown disruption, providing a confidence boost for the construction and renewables industries as they rise to covid-19 operational challenges, and a positive step towards the UK
A local energy system demonstrator project aiming to evidence how ground source heat pumps with smart heating controls can reduce heating costs for residents, whilst also lowering carbon emissions, is officially underway in Oxford. Leading housing provider Stonewater has partnered with Kensa Contracting to have 60 of its homes at
As the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) opens to applications, Kensa Contracting is urging local authorities and housing associations in England to act now and bid for a portion of the £160m available in 2021/22 to install highly efficient low carbon ground source heat pumps to tackle climate change and protect their tenants from fuel poverty. Ieman Barmaki, Director of Low Carbon Partnerships at Kensa Contracting, says: “We are very pleased to see ground source heat pumps included as a measure in this funding scheme which will help local authorities replace fossil fuel heating systems and deliver warm, energy-efficient homes whilst reducing carbon emissions and fuel bills. “It is critical that some of the most vulnerable in society can benefit from low cost and low carbon heating systems. There are currently 2.5m households across the UK in fuel poverty who are unable to afford adequate heating. This fund can make a significant impact on fuel poverty if ground source heat pumps are installed as part of the solution to place residents on a net zero pathway.” There is an 8-week application window for the first wave of SHDF funding bids, beginning on 23rd August and ending on 15th October. To help capitalise on this opportunity, Kensa Contracting will be delivering free CPD sessions showcasing the benefits of ground source heat pumps in social housing with large-scale retrofit case studies and demonstrating how the technology is eligible under the scheme. Local authorities are invited to register their interest here: https://kensa.group/shdf-cpd Kensa can also support local authorities in making a bid by delivering desktop feasibility studies of building stock to help identify ‘retrofit-ready’ projects, and providing estimates for the investment budgets and potential grant amounts needed for installing ground source heating systems. The UK government has committed to reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050, and over 10 years, the SHDF fund will potentially provide up to £3.8 billion in subsequent funding waves to encourage local authorities in England to retrofit measures such as low-carbon heating and insulation to increase energy efficiency and decarbonise their housing stock. The primary objective of the SHDF scheme is to upgrade a significant amount of England’s 4.1m social homes to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C by 2030. Currently, nearly 40% of properties fall below this, with fuel poverty posing a serious risk for residents when high fuel bills mean tough choices between heating or eating. Under the scheme’s guidelines, low carbon heating, including ground source heat pumps, can be installed where a ‘fabric first approach is taken’. Electrically-powered ground source heat pumps are sustainable, non-combustion devices generating no point of use emissions or pollution, and have been highlighted by government as a key part of the UK’s strategy to decarbonise heat, of which 37% of total UK carbon emissions are attributed to. Using freely available heat energy from the ground, a ground source heat pump can deliver 3 to 4 kilowatts (kW) of heat for every 1kW of electricity it consumes, making it highly efficient. While modern condensing boilers can be up to 90% efficient, a ground source heat pump can achieve efficiencies of 400%, without the carbon emissions or air pollution created by burning fossil fuels. The government’s 10-point-plan to put the UK back on track to meet its net-zero carbon target by 2050, states the aim to have 600,000 heat pump installations every year by 2028, and the Committee for Climate Change (CCC) has suggested this figure should even be increased to 900,000. This will require a massive scaling up of ground source heat pump installations, and Kensa believes that a Shared Ground Loop Array infrastructure is the key to achieving this. Shared Ground Loop Arrays are a modern-day renewable alternative to the traditional gas network that allow multiple properties to benefit from communal clusters of boreholes, with individual heat pumps installed inside each property. This approach is perfect for multiple occupancy dwellings such as tower blocks. The retrofit of a three tower-block scheme with Kensa Contracting and Croydon Council has been documented in a recently launched film here: https://kensa.group/shdf-croydon. The Croydon scheme provides a blueprint for the potential low-carbon retrofit of the 1.6 million flats in the UK, representing 41.8% of all households – a portion of which could be fast-tracked to warmer, greener, and cheaper homes through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.
A pioneering smart renewable heating scheme in Oxford, part of the £41m Energy Superhub Oxford project, has been given the green light to proceed following lockdown disruption, providing a confidence boost for the construction and renewables industries as they rise to covid-19 operational challenges, and a positive step towards the UK defining how it will meet its 2050 net zero target. The recommencement of the scheme with leading housing provider, Stonewater, and Kensa Contracting, will contribute to the Energy Superhub Oxford (ESO) project’s anticipated savings of 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year by 2021; the equivalent of taking 2,000 cars off the road. The 60-homes in Blackbird Leys will demonstrate how decarbonisation of heating using ground source heat pumps can interact with local energy systems to allow millions of homes to cut carbon and costs, and adopt a ‘smart cities’ model. The trial represents 20% of homes committed to receiving smart heating with Kensa ground source heat pumps as part of ESO, a world-first project backed by UKRI which is pioneering a model for the rapid decarbonisation of power, transport and heat in cities across the UK and globally. ESO showcases rapid electric vehicle charging, hybrid battery energy storage systems, low carbon heating, and smart energy management to improve air quality and accelerate Oxford’s journey to zero carbon. Councillor Tom Hayes, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Green Transport and Zero Carbon Oxford, Oxford City Council, visited the smart heat pump project as works resumed: “I am delighted that Blackbird Leys residents are first in line to benefit from a heat pumps system that saves them money and shrinks the city’s carbon footprint. Oxford’s Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change was clear that greener homes would be better homes, cheaper to heat. It was brilliant to visit the site of the new heat pumps, talk with the people making this aspect of Energy Superhub Oxford happen, and see at a social distance the positive impacts for local people. This year we have taken exciting steps forwards as part of the Energy Superhub Oxford project with the installation of electric vehicle chargers, electrification of the City Council’s fleet, and delivery of the electricity transformer to the National Grid substation in Cowley.” The residents at Blackbird Leys will have their night storage heating system replaced with a Kensa Shoebox ground source heat pump system coupled with Switchee heating controls, which will constantly sense, learn and respond to the inhabitant’s behaviour. Adding a further smart technology dimension to the running of the heat pump, Kensa’s heat optimisation software will take a day-ahead forecast of half hourly electricity costs, and automatically shift the operating times to enable the occupants to make savings from dynamic tariffs without having to change their behaviour. The smart heating system at Blackbird Leys is expected to save residents 3,520 tonnes of CO2 over their lifetime and cut their current night storage heating bills to levels lower than that of mains gas, all without adding strain to the UK’s electricity grid; a triple-challenge the renewables industry must overcome to ensure low carbon ground source heat pump technology is more widely adopted by society. Dr Matthew Trewhella, Managing Director at Kensa Contracting explains: “By introducing flexibility in how and when ground source heat pumps run, this trial will demonstrate how we can save residents even more money than typical ground source heat pump installations, even below the cost of gas, whilst modelling the impact heat pumps can have on balancing the electricity grid’s carbon and use/cost intensity. “Already low carbon and low cost, the ground source heat pump system at Blackbird Leys will save residents a further 25% in heating bills compared to a standard Kensa installation.” Adam Masters, Sustainability Project Manager at Stonewater, said: “The latest IPPR report found that at least 12 million homes in England need to be fitted with heat pumps and new energy efficiency measures if the UK is to meet its net zero targets by 2050, and lift thousands of households out of fuel poverty. “Through this project we’re demonstrating how housing providers can not only work towards a more sustainable future, but an economical one for their customers too, and we’re pleased that work at this particular housing scheme has been able to recommence.” Kensa hope its role in Oxford’s trial of the electrification and decarbonisation of integrated heat, power and transport, will encourage the adoption of Smart Local Energy System models across more cities, rural developments, towns and villages. Dr Trewhella elaborates: “An elegant advantage of this smart renewable heating approach is we can manage the running times of multiple heat pumps depending on the desired outcomes; in this project we have chosen to prioritise running costs. For greater carbon savings, you could switch the priority to carbon, or to grid management to stabilise voltages. All outcomes offer all benefits to some degree, but in different ratios depending on the priority. Here we are trying to fix the problem of electricity demand that is going to exist in five years’ time as the UK migrates to low-carbon electrical heating systems over fossil fuels and electric vehicles; this project is a great demonstrator of our future local energy systems strategy.” A blog documenting Kensa Contracting’s smart renewable heating pilot scheme with Stonewater is available to follow here. A virtual site tour of the Blackbird Leys scheme is to be hosted in October 2020. Interest in this event can be registered by emailing events@thekensagroup.com.
A local energy system demonstrator project aiming to evidence how ground source heat pumps with smart heating controls can reduce heating costs for residents, whilst also lowering carbon emissions, is officially underway in Oxford. Leading housing provider Stonewater has partnered with Kensa Contracting to have 60 of its homes at Blackbird Leys installed with Kensa’s innovative low carbon heating solution. Individual Kensa Shoebox ground source heat pumps in each property, connected to a communal ground array, will integrate with smart controls and time-of-use tariffs to optimise heat production for cost and carbon savings. The heat pump installations form part of Energy Superhub Oxford (ESO), a a world-first project showcasing an integrated approach to decarbonising power, heat and transport across Oxford. Supported by Innovate UK, ESO is led by consortium partners Oxford City Council, Pivot Power, Habitat Energy, Kensa Contracting, Invinity Energy Systems and the University of Oxford. The renewable heating scheme with Stonewater is the first phase of Kensa Contracting’s aim to pilot the smart technology in 300 homes around Oxford over the next two years under the ESO project. ESO aims to demonstrate how ground source heat pumps with smart controls can help balance the electricity grid as part of an integrated local energy solution that also includes grid connected batteries and smart electric vehicle charging. Leon Storer, Assistant Director – Capital Investment at Stonewater, said: “We’re delighted to be a part of this innovative and forward-thinking project, supporting the local authority in achieving a net zero carbon future. “By replacing our residents’ current high carbon night storage heaters with Kensa’s ground source heat pump systems, we’re able to not only work towards a more sustainable future, but an economical one too. This is because a benefit of transitioning to this type of heat pump system is the significant cost savings it provides for residents.” Dr Matthew Trewhella, Managing Director of Kensa Contracting, said: “Kensa is delighted to partner with Stonewater for the first phase in this 300 property pilot ground source heat pump project. The residents will benefit from clean, renewable heat with savings of up to 25% compared to a standard ground source heating system. Smart meters enable residents to switch to Octopus’s unique Agile Tariff, which varies the electricity price every half hour and optimises energy use when renewable power is prevalent on the grid, and together with Switchee internet connected smart heating controls will automatically run resident’s heating systems at the lowest cost times to reduce their bills while maintaining their comfort levels, and caring for the environment.” Despite delays to commence as a result of coronavirus, Kensa expects to complete the installations across the Stonewater homes before winter 2020.
