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Three Net Zero office buildings at Princes Dock, Liverpool Waters, will become the first commercial office buildings in Liverpool to connect their heating and hot water supply to the new Mersey Heat network.

The multi-million-pound energy centre, currently under construction and set to complete in the autumn, will have the capacity to provide low carbon heat and hot water, through the Mersey Heat network, to thousands of homes and businesses around the city, reducing energy costs and their carbon footprint.

Businesses based at No. 8, No. 10, and No. 12 Princes Dock, which sit within Peel Waters’ growing Liverpool Waters district, have already been verified as Net Zero for three years running. The popular waterside office space will now also benefit from locally generated heat, through the district heat network and energy centre. This will make it the largest cluster of offices in Liverpool to provide this opportunity to its tenants.

The energy centre, which will be home to one of the UK’s largest water source heat pumps, will take heat from the water in the nearby Leeds/Liverpool Canal and use it to heat surrounding homes and businesses via a 6km district heating network.

Last year, renewable energy company, Vital Energi was appointed by Peel NRE to design and build the energy centre off Great Howard Street, which is expected to be complete by September 2024. Led by Peel NRE’s district heat network specialist, Ener-Vate, the Mersey Heat network is set to become a major part of Liverpool’s low carbon energy infrastructure.

The Mersey Heat network will reduce Liverpool’s reliance on fossil fuels and save 2,000 tonnes of carbon emissions every year – the equivalent of taking 1,000 cars off the roads. The infrastructure will provide low carbon heat and hot water to thousands of homes and commercial space within Liverpool Waters as well as sustainably futureproofing future developments planned for the growing mixed-use district, as well as wider domestic and commercial buildings across Liverpool.

This initial phase of the project could supply 20GWh of heat every year with planning permission in place to expand the project to supply around 45GWh (the equivalent of supplying 17,000 new homes with heating and hot water).

Liverpool Waters is part of Peel Waters, a UK wide portfolio of vibrant and innovative, waterfront developments, delivering large-scale, sustainable regeneration projects, creating jobs, economic growth, new homes and new public realm across the country.

Duffryn Heat Network is one of the largest district heating pipework replacement projects being delivered in the UK and will see the original 50-year old network replaced with a brand new district heating scheme which will bring more reliable heating to the 1000+ homes connected to the network.

The project is a major undertaking which involves replacing 7.5km of ageing pipes  with a modern and highly insulated network. The project received a £3.7m grant from the Heat Network Efficiency Scheme (HNES), and this work will secure the future of the district heating system and deliver a better experience for customers.

Learn more about the project which is turning an ageing 1970’s heat network into a truly modern renewable energy solution in the video below.

A solar farm which will power Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital for three quarters of the year is set to be up and running this spring.

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), City of Wolverhampton Council, and project partners including Vital Energi, have built the solar farm at a former landfill site the size of 22 football pitches, adjacent to Bentley Way, Wednesfield. It is set to open in April.

The facility will power the entire hospital site with self-generated renewable energy for around 288 days a year, and save the Trust around £15-20 million over the next 20 years – money which will be put back into frontline healthcare.

The solar farm will produce 6.9MWp of renewable energy to New Cross Hospital and will generate an estimated carbon saving of 1,583 tonnes of CO2e per annum.

More than 15,000 electricity generating solar panels have been installed at the site by main contractor Vital Energi.

Work to secure the 40-plus acre brownfield site included protecting badger setts, and removing methane.

The project, combined with existing green technologies, allows the Trust to move away from reliance on the national grid and to reduce its exposure to rising electricity costs in the next two decades. It also supports the Trust’s goal of reducing its carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2025, and of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Stew Watson, Director of Estates Development at RWT, said: “This investment is a huge boost to help us achieve that.

“Our primary focus is always on the patient and these works ensure the Trust saves money on future energy bills, which we can then subsequently invest across other healthcare services.”

Ashley Malin, Managing Director at Vital Energi, added: “We’re delighted to have transformed a former coal mine and landfill site into this impressive solar farm, which is the largest single source of green energy on a hospital site within the UK.

“The clean energy will power the air source heat pumps within the hospital, and significantly reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint.”

Work has also been completed on the underground cabling to connect the hospital to the solar farm, which covers a distance of one and a half miles.

RWT has received around £15m in grant funding for the project. This comprised contributions from the government’s Levelling-Up fund, the NHS and Salix Finance, a government-funded body.

The Trust also received a further £33m to carry out green energy works as part of the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.

Edinburgh College has an ambition to be at the cutting edge of environmental sustainability within the further education sector and aims to dramatically reduce its carbon emissions by 2030.

With over 27,000 students, staff and specialist engineering equipment across the four campuses, the College has similar energy requirements to a small town, so needed a radical approach to accelerate their net zero journey.

The College will be working with Vital Energi to decarbonise their entire heating infrastructure within Midlothian Campus, removing the existing fossil fuel system and replacing it with the latest renewable heating technology. When complete, the project will be responsible for 101 tonnes of carbon reduction per year.

The works, delivered through the Non-Domestic Energy Efficiency Framework (NDEE), will replace the College’s existing gas heating system with a new 640kW air source heat pump. An integral part of this is the existing secondary heating system upgrades which will be implemented alongside the heat pump to provide optimum system operation.

The project is being delivered through the NDEE framework and comes with an energy performance contract, which guarantees certain key performance indicators, such as carbon reduction, will be met, giving the College the certainty that their new heating system will perform as promised.

Colin Mclaren, Edinburgh College Estates Services Manager, said, “We are excited to be working with Vital Energi to deliver this key project on the College’s journey towards net zero. The funding provided through the Scottish Government’s Energy Efficiency Grant Scheme has allowed us to fully implement decarbonisation at our Midlothian Campus, which is a pathfinder project for the sector.”

Deal signed to deliver water sourced heat pump to Mersey Heat Energy Centre

A deal has been signed with Star Refrigeration Ltd to provide a £2.5m water source heat pump to the Mersey Heat Energy Centre currently under construction at Peel Water’s Liverpool Waters at Princes Dock in Liverpool.

Led by Peel NRE’s district heat network specialist Ener-Vate and being built by Vital Energi, the project is set to become a major part of the city’s low carbon energy infrastructure.

One of the first to be installed in the UK, the pump will use game changing technology to extract heat from the water in the Leeds Liverpool Canal and use it to provide low carbon energy to thousands of homes and businesses around the city via a 6km district heating network.

Set to be operational by winter 2024, the Mersey Heat Energy Centre will provide an easy, affordable and convenient solution to decarbonise heating with the potential to provide enough low carbon heat for over a fifth of the homes in Liverpool. Local homes and businesses will be able to connect into the existing district heating pipework which has already been installed.

The government has identified heat networks as a crucial part of how the UK will reach net zero and one of the most cost-effective ways of decarbonising heating in built up areas. Using a water sourced heat pump to heat buildings is three times more efficient than using electricity for heating and has the potential to reduce carbon emissions by up to 90%.

Jo Longdon, Commercial Director, Ener-Vate, said: “This is another major milestone towards delivering a game changing new approach to the way homes and businesses are heated in Liverpool. There isn’t the option to do nothing, we have to move away from fossil fuels and towards low carbon sources of heat. The Energy Centre will enable buildings to easy connect via an existing pipeline network providing an overnight solution to the challenge of decarbonising our heat sources.”

David Pearson, Director, Star Refrigeration Ltd, said: “David Pearson, Director, Star Renewables said: “Our heat pumps are manufactured in the UK and are an efficient way to cut CO₂ emissions and lower the carbon footprint of connected buildings by around 75%, which will reduce further as the grid decarbonises. It will help thousands of homes and businesses move away from fossil fuels.

“We’re proud to be providing a key component of the Mersey Heat Energy Centre, with the district heat network providing a critical step on the city region’s decarbonisation journey.”

The 8m x 12m pump, which is currently being manufactured in Glasgow, will be delivered to the Mersey Heat Network Energy Centre in the summer.

The district heating network will provide low carbon heat and hot water for up to 6,700 homes and 1.3 million square feet of commercial space at the Liverpool Waters development as well as wider domestic and commercial buildings across Liverpool. This initial phase of the project could supply 20GWh of heat every year with planning permission in place to expand the project to supply around 45GWh (the equivalent of supplying 17,000 new homes with heating and hot water).

Following on from the success of their award-winning £13m energy conservation project, work has begun on Phase 2 of the Westminster City Council Carbon Management Programme, which will deliver a further 579 tonnes of carbon reduction per year.

Phase 2 represents a further £9.9m investment, which includes grant funding of £3.8m secured through the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (3b).

During the pre-construction period, Vital Energi’s team assessed 24 buildings to identify which energy improvements would deliver the largest carbon reductions. In addition to this, many buildings from Phase 1 of the programme were revisited to see what further conservation measures could be implemented.

The result of these surveys is that 38 of these buildings were chosen for improvements, with energy conservation measures including air source heat pumps, rooftop solar PV, fabric improvements and upgrades to the lighting, cooling, and air handling systems.  The team will also upgrade the Building Energy Management Systems which make intelligent decisions about how energy is used.

Cllr David Boothroyd continued, “In 2022 we delivered 12 solar PV projects, including the installation of a 255-panel solar array at Queen Mother Sports Centre, and a 378-panel array at Moberly Sports Centre. Currently, we are installing solar PV on a further 10 sites, including the Avenues Youth Project in Harrow Road. The initial 12 sites will provide a total peak output of 660 kWp and generate 284,000 kWh per annum. Once the additional 10 sites have been completed, the total peak output will increase to 875 kWp. This will make a huge difference, reducing our carbon emissions by a further 48 tonnes annually.

The project will be transformative for many of Westminster City Council’s premises, with buildings such as the Avenues Youth Project, Dorothy Gardner Nursery School, Mary Patterson Nursery School, Mickey Star Nursery and Paddington Recreation Ground Changing Block now getting 100% of their heat from renewable sources, via air source heat pumps.  The scheme will also see solar panels installed at the Avenues Youth Project, Beachcroft House Care Home and the Central Area Service Centre, which will provide annual electricity savings of 39,936 kWh and decrease the dependency on electricity from the grid.

Battery storage, or battery energy storage systems (BESS), are rechargeable batteries that can store energy from different sources and then release power when customers need it most. It’s an exciting time for Vital as we’ve recently installed four 2MW BESS at acute hospital sites across the UK.

Commercial Structuring Manager, Stewart Williams, has been involved in the procurement of our batteries and is playing a key role in the research and development of batteries and energy storage. He’s investigating emerging battery technologies for use in future projects too!

Stewart shares 5 things you may not know about battery storage…

1. A useful analogy to understand GW vs GWh
   Power Capacity (GW) vs Energy Capacity (GWh) explained. Energy is the ability to cause change; power is the rate energy is moved, or used – think of a bath, the rate the water runs down the plughole is power capacity (maximum power discharged at a given time) and the amount of water the bathtub holds is energy capacity (total amount of energy able to be stored).
2. How many homes can the current UK battery fleet power?
   At the end of 2023, the total operating power capacity of batteries in Great Britain was 3.5GW, up from 2.1 GW at the end of 2022.Total energy capacity has grown even quicker, up to 4.5GWh at the end 2023 from 2.3GWh in 2022, which means the average duration of battery energy capacity in GB is now 1.27 hours, up from 1.1 hours in 2022. The UK battery fleet is forecasted to reach over 5GWh in energy capacity by the end of 2023, which would be enough to power 600,000 homes for a full day.
3. UK battery storage pipeline
   With a record 1.5GW and 2.2GWh of battery capacity being added operationally in 2023, the pipeline for battery storage schemes in the UK is now at 71GW/110GWh. This includes 24GW/40GWh with planning approval and 2.8GW/4.9GWh already being constructed. There is still marginal difference in GW/GWh for operational (peak chasing) assets, but now a significant difference for pipeline schemes with the emergence of longer duration storage assets. 
4. Government investment in battery
   Recent data shows that nearly a fifth of the UK government’s total energy technologies investment must be spent on energy storage between 2025 and 2030 to meet renewables targets. Almost 10% of grid capacity in the UK will be provided by battery storage by 2030, costing an estimated £20 billion.
5. Europe’s largest battery is in the UK
   The largest live Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) by energy capacity in Europe as at the beginning of 2023 is in the UK, in Yorkshire. This stores up to 196MWh or enough to power around 300,000 homes for 2 hours. For context, each of the four 2MW/2MWh BESS we’ve installed at NHS sites across the UK would store enough power to boil nearly 22,000 kettles…

Click here to learn more about battery storage.

Learn more about Vital’s battery projects:

• Northwick Park Hospital
• The Christie Hospital
• Cheltenham General Hospital and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital

Vital Energi are delighted to announce we have been awarded a 3-year Contract Energy Management (CEM) contract at Marylebone Square, London. The development is a beautiful mixed-use building, located just behind Marylebone High Street and comprises 79 apartments and 23 commercial properties including boutiques, restaurants, a gym and a versatile community hall.

The fully packaged CEM contract means Vital are Concord London and Moxon Street Residential’s one point of call for all their operation and maintenance, metering and billing and customer services requirements at the central London development.

Vital’s expert Operation & Maintenace Team will manage the full services of the project, from site mobilisation and set up, asset management through to regular efficiency reporting.  Services include planned preventative maintenance, reactive maintenance works, 24-hour system monitoring and the servicing of the heat interface units to ensure the efficient and uninterrupted supply of heat to the residents of Marylebone Square.

Furthermore, to deliver accurate metering and billing services, Vital Energi billing systems will interface with a third-party metering system which was already installed on-site. This demonstrates Vital’s ability to adopt and collaborate with other metering systems in the market and allows the clients the flexibility to choose the best metering and billing platform for them, regardless of the installed hardware.

Principal Engineer, Alex Marshall, has been with Vital Energi for almost four years and plays a key role in bid development for a wide range of projects, many of which include solar.

We asked him to share 5 interesting facts about solar…

1. By the end of 2023, the UK is expected to have 15,674 MWp of installed solar capacity; a growth of roughly 20% from 2022. The renewable energy that will be generated by those panels is equivalent to the annual electricity demand of approximately 4 million traditional homes. Vital will have installed almost 50 MWp by 2024!
2. The largest solar farm in the world is the Golmud Solar Park in Qinghai, China. It has an output capacity of 2.8 GWp, which is equivalent in size to over 10,000 football fields. It contains over 7 million solar panels, which would have required 126,000 tonnes of sand to produce enough silicon to make the panels. The energy produced from this solar farm would equate to the annual demand of over 1.3 million traditional UK homes alone.
3. Conventional solar panels have a maximum efficiency of 33.7%. By re-engineering the way panels are made, such as using multiple layers and combining different materials, scientists have worked out that this could go up to 86%! But we are a long way off yet…
   Some novel materials that are being used require interesting combinations of elements, such as Gallium, Indium, and Arsenic. Newer materials that are being investigated are Perovskites – which have complex crystal structures for harvesting light and significantly increase the efficiency of panels.
4. Solar panels are manufactured using silicon, which is highly abundant in its natural ores (the main one being sand). Silicon can be processed into different types of material depending on the intended use:
   ​​​​​​​Traditional solar panels use individual or multiple smaller wafers of silicon (monocrystalline and polycrystalline), which can be expensive to produce, but have high efficiencies and outputs with relatively long lifespans.
   Some solar panels are coated with an amorphous (gel-like) layer, which is less expensive and better suited to harsh environments (dark / cold / hot), but is more susceptible to degradation over time.
   Unfortunately, as has been reported in the press, a lot of the silicon produced for solar panels is produced in an area of China where there have been widespread reports of modern slavery. At Vital, we work closely with our supply chain to ensure that the PV panels we procure are not linked to these specific areas of China, and that everything we use is ethically sourced.
5. The world’s power usage is approximately 17 Terawatts (TW) on average. If we built a huge solar farm in the desert, we’d need around 43,000 square miles to produce this level of continuous power. Just 1% of the Sahara Desert would be enough area to provide all of this power and would cost a tenth of the equivalent in nuclear power stations.

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Learn more about some of Vital’s solar projects:

• Swansea solar farm
• Elstow solar farm
• Wolverhampton solar farm
• Dundee City council roof mounted solar
• Northwick Park Hospital roof mounted solar