News / Sustainability
Summer air to warm Easton homes in winter
Construction will start at the end of September on a project that will use warm summer air to heat homes in winter.
Easton Community Centre is to host innovative technology that will capture summer heat with air source heat pumps, charging a tongue-tying ‘inter-seasonal borehole thermal energy store’ buried beneath the park to supply heat in winter via district heat networks.
The pilot scheme is being funded by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) as part of the ‘Heat Networks Demonstrator’ project. Once operational, it could provide “real-world validation of the energy, cost and carbon savings modelled”.
How the community heat store project could look.
A coalition of companies have so far conducted feasibility studies and are now constructing a full business plan. The CHOICES project combines pioneering inter-seasonal heat storage technology from renewable heat company ICAX, energy-vector research from the University of Bath, CEPRO’s operations, monitoring and billing platform and carbon life-cycle assessment (LCA) and economic analysis by Eunomia. The team are working closely with Easton Community Centre and Easton Energy Group at the proposed site in Bristol.
Adam Baddeley, Eunomia’s Head of Energy, said: “At Eunomia we believe it’s important to help support and develop innovative and viable business models in energy storage and local energy supply. Especially in this Bristol Green Capital Year, we’re pleased to work with members of Bristol’s vibrant low carbon innovation sector and help bring this promising technology to the city.”
Project delivery is scheduled for March 2016. Residents are invited to view project details on September 19 as part of Community Energy Fortnight, with details to be released closer to the time.