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We are passionate about giving back to the communities we are working in, so as part of our solar installation project at Islington Waste Recycling Centre, we organised a charity football tournament for local girls’ teams to get involved in.

We contacted Kentish Town F.C., who do great work championing girls’ football, five under-12s girls’ teams took part in the Vital Energi Cup, which took place last weekend at Market Road Football Pitches in Islington.

All five teams competed against each other, with the teams finishing first and second competing in the final for the Vital Energi Cup, and the teams finishing third and fourth battling it out for the Vital Energi Plate. Camden Youth were crowned the overall winners after an intense final with London Football School which ended with penalties.

The Mayor of Islington and the Mayor of Camden were both in attendance to hand out medals and talk to the players, and they took part in the charity penalty shootout too.

Dr Michael Bennett, who is the Director of Player Wellbeing at the Professional Footballers’ Association (P.F.A), was also there to give a speech to the players about his time as a professional footballer and to highlight the importance of education.

Kentish Town F.C. provide game time to children for as little cost as possible, and are able to operate thanks to fundraising and donations. The tournament helped raise more than £700 for Kentish Town F.C., which will go towards equipment and pitch hire, and we will soon be providing a new kit to one of the Kentish Town teams.

Vital Energi’s Contracts Director, Paul Campbell, who attended the tournament and is playing a key role in the delivery of the Islington Waste Recycling Centre project, said:

“Having witnessed first-hand the sheer excitement generated at the charity football event, I feel very privileged to have been involved with the organisation of the tournament. As part of Vital Energi’s commitment to improving the environment and engaging with local communities, events such as this are heartwarming with great team spirit from everyone involved.”

We are undertaking decarbonisation works at Islington Waste Recycling Centre which includes the installation of solar panels and striping out gas pipework to aid in making the centre carbon neutral. Click here to read more about the project.

Blackburn with Darwen Council have set a target of being carbon neutral by 2030 and as part of this ambition, will be working with Vital Energi on a new heat decarbonisation plan which will investigate ways in which the council can lower the emissions from their estate.

Vital Energi will produce the plan which will inform the council’s transition to being carbon neutral by 2030 and inform an application for funding to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.

David Wilkinson, Vital Energi’s Design Director for Pre-Construction, commented, “This is a fantastic opportunity to be working on a project with some of the area’s best-loved and most-iconic buildings. The mix of premises make this project interesting, with some originating from the mid-1800s and others only approximately 10 years old.”

The council has chosen 13 of their buildings for the project and Vital Energi have undertaken in-depth surveys to identify the best options which could reduce carbon emissions by hundreds of tonnes per year. Buildings include:

• 10 Duke St, Blackburn
• Blackburn Central Library
• Blackburn Market
• Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
• Blackburn Sports & Leisure Centre
• Blackburn Town Hall
• Darwen Leisure Centre
• Darwen Town Hall
• Blackburn Enterprise Centre
• King Georges Hall
• Witton Park Arena
• Darwen Town Hall
• Darwen Library & Theatre

Vital Energi have been awarded the £11.5m design and build contract at Imperial College London, where they will de-steam the energy centre, saving 2,400 tonnes of carbon a year and accelerating the College’s journey to net zero by 2040.

Imperial College London is home to over 20,000 students and members of staff across many campuses, and as well as upgrading equipment within the existing energy centre at the South Kensington campus, Vital Energi will be decarbonising multiple campus buildings, including the Central Library, Biochemistry, Engineering, City Guilds building, and the Sherfield Building, which is one of the largest on site.

The project received grant funding from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), which is administered by Salix Finance on behalf of the Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), formally part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

To make the campus more sustainable, Vital Energi will be replacing three 12MW steam generation boilers with 3 new 10MW efficient boilers, which will serve as the main source of heat generation in the Energy Centre. From these a primary circuit of Medium Heat Temperature Hot Water (MTHW) will be installed to three main plate heat exchangers which will serve the entire campus, and then feed into the multiple buildings and faculty facilities. Vital will design and install the Medium Temperature Hot Water (MTHW) and Low Temperature Hot Water (LTHW) network which distributes water around the campus.

Once the energy centre is complete, it will serve heating and hot water to the whole campus.

Work has already commenced with an aim to be completed by winter 2023.

Vital Energi are working with York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to reduce the carbon footprint of York Teaching Hospital through the implementation of low-carbon energy solutions, helping the Trust work towards their goal of net zero by 2040.

As well as installing two 200kW air source heat pumps which will allow for zero carbon on-site energy generation, Vital Energi are helping the hospital site become more energy efficient through upgrades to the building fabric of the 3-storey Ward Block Building, which houses ward and clinical areas.

The existing fabric of the Ward Block Building, which was constructed in the 1970s, has poor thermal insulation properties and experiences significant heat loss through both the building fabric and glazing units, which results in higher energy consumption.

The building fabric upgrades have recently been implemented on the west elevation of the building, which has the greatest single external surface of the estate, totalling 2,520m2. The solution will reduce heat loss from the building, resulting in reduced heating bills and lower carbon emissions, as well as significantly improving the external aesthetics of the building, and patients and staff will benefit from increased natural light and improved ventilation.

With vast experience of working within a hospital environment, the Vital Energi team are working alongside hospital staff to ensure clinical services will be maintained during the fabric works and to also ensure optimal internal temperatures and air quality conditions will be maintained at all times.

Vital Energi’s Account Director, Steve Black, said:

“This is our second project at York Teaching Hospital, and we’re proud to be helping them make further strides towards their target of net zero emissions by 2040 through the installation of a range of energy solutions. The upgrades to the external façade and the windows of the ward block are almost complete, and not only has the energy efficiency of the building increased significantly, the upgrades have created a strong visual impact.”

The project received grant funding from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), which is administered by Salix Finance on behalf of the Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), formally part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to replace old gas (oil and coal) powered heating and hot water systems with low carbon systems whilst reducing the heat requirement through energy efficiency measures such as increased insulation.

DESNZ, York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Vital Energi are delivering the project through the Carbon and Energy Fund Framework, which has been specifically created to fund complex energy infrastructure upgrades for public sector organisations.

This is second project Vital Energi will implement at York Teaching Hospital. Back in 2016, they designed and retrofitted the hospital’s existing energy centre, and installed a range of energy conservation measures, guaranteeing the Trust savings in excess of £12m in energy costs and over 45,000 tonnes of carbon over the course of the 15-year contract.

Work is already well underway on site, and is expected to be complete by the autumn.

We are excited to be working with Enviroenergy on the Nottingham District Heat Network, which is one of the largest and oldest district heating schemes in the country.

We’ll be carrying out a full network study, performing an in-depth survey of every aspect of the scheme, which includes the last remaining sections of the original steel mains which were installed into concrete ducts in the 1970’s.

Ashley Walsh, Managing Director – Heat Networks explains, “Nottingham was one of the pioneers of district heating in the UK and we have been contributing to their heat network for almost 30 years, so it’s exciting to be involved in a network-wide survey to gain an in-depth understanding of the current state of the network.

“With some of the pipework having been in the ground for 50 years, the Nottingham Heat Network has been a great advertisement for decentralised energy and we’re sure it has played a massive role in giving many other towns, cities and organisations the confidence to embrace district heating.”

The survey will be a significant undertaking which will look at approximately 50km of pre-insulated mains, the risers and laterals connecting approximately 4,600 properties and a full review of the plant and equipment installed across the network’s 47 plant rooms and substations.

The conclusion of this will see us produce a 50-year forecast for the future of the network, giving Enviroenergy the information, they need to ensure the long-term success of their network.Ashley Walsh concludes, “This is the type of long-term planning which has made Nottingham a true success story of the future.  By investing in this exercise, Enviroenergy will gain a deep understanding of the long-term maintenance and upgrade requirements which will carry the network past its centenary.”

Once the surveys are complete, we’ll make recommendations to Enviroenergy about areas of action such as internal and underground pipework replacement, planned maintenance and upgrades to the leak detection system to ensure the network can serve the residents and businesses of Nottingham for many years to come.

Vital Energi’s Building Services apprentice, Ibrahim Qadir is set for a 23,000km globe-trotting research project after winning the prestigious Ken Dale Travel Bursary from CIBSE.

Ibrahim won the bursary after delivering a presentation on his research proposal which will investigate the different approaches to artificial intelligence and machine learning in the building services industry.

Ibrahim will now travel to Singapore, The United Arab Emirates and Sweden, where he will meet a range of people, visit projects and study how AI is implemented in differing climates.

Upon his return to the UK, Ibrahim will produce a paper summarising his findings and present it at the President’s Prize Dinner in London in October 2024.

The Ken Dale Travel Bursary offers young building services engineers the chance to experience technical, economic, environmental, social and political conditions in other countries, and to examine how these factors affect the practice of building services engineering.

South Tyneside Council have set ambitious carbon targets of net zero carbon in operations by 2030 and one of the projects which will be driving those emission reductions is the Hebburn Renewable Energy Scheme.

The Paul Younger Energy Centre which supplies the heat network, is currently starting to take shape, with the steel framework installation progressing well. The building will house a two stage 450kw air to water source heat pump solution which will take ambient heat from the air and convert it into low-temperature-hot-water to provide reliable, lower carbon heating.

Air source heat pumps used for the scheme minimise the use of traditional, gas-fired boilers, which will enable the project to deliver carbon savings of approximately 319 tonnes per year.

The build of the energy centre follows the completion of the district heating network infrastructure installation and connection works for residential development Durham Court, and Hebburn Central leisure centre, over the past 18 months, with plans for more buildings to be added in the future.

The building is named after Professor Paul Younger, one of the region’s pioneering scientists, who played a key role in the bid to make Newcastle a City of Science and Technology.

The project is due for completion by the end of 2023.

Air, ground, and water source heat pumps are one of the most effective technologies for reducing carbon, and with a potential 500% efficiency, they are a great solution for projects of all sizes.

With almost 15 years’ experience in the industry, Elliott Sharpe, Vital Energi’s Design Director in London, leads the design and CAD departments to deliver high quality design solutions that set new standards in best practice. Elliott is helping Vital remain at the forefront of renewable technologies, driving continuous improvement and energy efficiency, with a strong focus on heat pump technology, which is helping the UK’s journey to net zero.

Elliott gives us an insight into heat pump technology, covering the benefits, for businesses and the environment alike, the factors that have to be considered when thinking about heat pumps, and he tells us about some of the large scale heat pump projects he’s worked on, including the UK’s largest water source heat pump.

What types of heat pump are there and how do they work?
Heat pumps can appear quite complicated at first glance, but the technology has been around for quite some time. Think about your fridge at home or an air conditioning system for an office – these are using heat pump technology.
A heat pump takes energy from a source such as water, the ground, or surrounding air, and then using a refrigerant and power from an electrical supply, this heat is transferred into your home, at a higher temperature than the source. I know what you’re thinking, how does water from a lake or cold air outside turn into hot heating water coming out of the heat pump. This is the clever part inside, the heat pump is compressing and expanding a refrigerant in a cycle, and it’s this process that is able to take water from that cold lake and turn it into heat for your radiators.

What are the key benefits of heat pumps?
Efficiency! In the right conditions, a heat pump can operate at 300, 400, dare I say 500% efficiency. What this means is for 1 unit of consumed electrical energy, the heat pump is producing 5 units of energy.

Are there any other renewable technologies that work well alongside heat pumps?
Yes, heat pumps are a key part of a wider technology mix, that when combined together can provide a low carbon solution. This might be solar thermal panels that are adding heat into the ground to recharge the thermal energy taken out by the heat pump, or a biofuel CHP engine that’s used to feed electricity to the heat pump.

What factors have to be observed if considering a heat pump?
Consider where you’re going to source energy for the heat pump, do you have a river nearby or can you drill deep into the ground on your site? Maybe you have lots of outdoor space for an air source solution. Then think about your local electrical infrastructure, depending on how large your heat pump installation is, this could be a significant factor to consider.  When it comes to water source heat pumps, there is also the potential to drill down and utilise aquifers, which are bodies of water that lie under the surface.

Tell us about some of the heat pump projects you’ve worked on…
We are currently developing and delivering seven heat pump projects, with the most recent completion being the UK’s largest district heating connected water source heat pump project at Queens Quay, Clydebank, where we installed two 2.65MW heat pumps to extract energy from the River Clyde, providing heat and hot water to surrounding homes and businesses.
We’re also really proud of our recent work with Southwark Council to provide a more efficient low carbon heat supply using water source heat pumps to supply and decarbonise over 2,000 properties, using ground water abstracted from and reinjected into locally drilled boreholes.

Can you explain the difference between an open and closed loop system?
Let’s take a couple of examples to explain. An open loop system is where we are directly extracting energy from the source, such as taking water from a river. We pump water from the river, extract energy back at the heat pump and we pump this water back into the river, so because we are interacting directly with the river water, this is an open loop system. For a closed loop system, let’s take pipework installed in boreholes deep into the ground as our example. Within this pipework, we have a fluid that is transferring energy from the ground, which we then pump back to the heat pump, extract this energy and pump it back into the ground around this closed loop. So unlike in our first open loop example where we directly pumped the river water, here we are transferring energy from the ground via a heat transfer fluid inside a close pipework circuit.

What size network can a heat pump power?
Heat pumps come in a huge variety of sizes, from one heat pump in your back garden serving that single dwelling, all the way up to large centralised district heating production serving thousands of end users connected to a heat network.

How easy is it to retrofit heat pumps into an existing network?
It comes with its challenges of course. First, we have to determine the appropriate source of energy for the retrofit heat pump, is this water, ground or air source? Then we have to consider how hard are we asking the heat pump to work, what I mean is, the temperature we are asking the heat pump to produce. Older systems often operate at higher temperatures, which heat pumps can achieve – the trade-off is a reduction in efficiency, so it’s about finding a balance between modifications to the existing network to lower temperatures and the heat pump selection. So, it depends on a project by project bases how easy it is, but it’s certainly possible.

Why are heat pumps becoming more popular?
Changes in planning policy and the decarbonisation of the electrical grid are major factors. With the electrical grid becoming less carbon intensive, people are turning to electricity as a source of fuel – remember heat pumps require an electrical supply.

How are heat pumps renewable if they rely on electricity for power?
Good question! We’ve talked about how heat pumps can use energy from water, the ground, or air, but quite rightly, they need an electrical supply. In some cases, it could be that this electrical supply is coming directly from a renewable source itself, such a PV panels. However, for the majority of installations this electrical supply will come from the grid, so we have to consider how clean is this electricity supplying the heat pump. Some may argue that the grid isn’t quite as low carbon as future planning policy is indicating, but generally speaking, we can see that the grid is on a path of decarbonisation, so the electricity we power the heat pumps with is coming from a greener source each day. Combine this with the efficiency a heat pump can operate at and you start to see why a heat pump is a low carbon technology.

With over 30 years’ industry experience, Vital Energi specialise in the design and installation of the latest renewable and low carbon energy generation, distribution and consumption technologies.

If you have an energy project in mind, or would like more information about how we can help decarbonise your business, please contact us today.

Vital Energi’s range of vTherm Heat Interface Units (HIU’s) have distinguished themselves as the most efficient HIU’s currently on the UK market when tested independently against the 2018 BESA Test regime, making them ideal for 4^th generation district heating projects that use heat pumps.

Ian Spencer, Associate Design Director for Vital Energi explains, “Heat pumps operate at lower temperatures than traditional heating systems.  For heat pumps the lower the temperature the higher the efficiency.  Some HIU’s can perform poorly when connected to a heat pump as they are not designed to operate at lower temperatures, which results in higher flow rates and narrower temperature differentials.  This brings down the overall efficiency of a scheme, generates higher carbon emissions and costs residents more money.  Whilst losses may be relatively small on an individual HIU basis, across an entire development these issues can cost thousands of pounds in inefficiencies each year.”

“Our vTherm range of HIU’s was developed with the next generation of district heat networks in mind and the inclusion of heat pump technologies. We believe that the upcoming BESA HIU tests with lower temperatures will clearly demonstrate that the vTherm HIU range is the right choice for 4^th generation district heating and renewable energy sourced projects.”

The vTherm range of HIU’s also recorded the lowest VWART (Volume Weighted Average Return Temperature) results when independently tested against the BESA criteria at 60 degrees.  This, alongside its low heat losses, showed our HIU’s to be the most efficient on the UK market.

We are currently installing our vTherm units on the Queens Quay Project in Scotland, which is the first large-scale water source heat pump project in the UK.

We are currently working on a decarbonisation project with Westminster City Council, and as part of their journey to net zero, they’re exploring a range of renewable technologies. We recently took consultants from the council on a tour of the completed Southwark water source heat pump project, so they could learn about the benefits of a project like this, along with any challenges.

Tom Vosper, Strategic Project Manager for Southwark City Council led the tour and was joined by Vital’s Operations Manager, Steve Parsons, Pre-Construction Director, James Davis, and Principal Engineer Paul Canning.

During the visit, consultants saw the 120m boreholes that were drilled within the Newington estate and learnt the challenges around completing these works within a densely populated residential area. They also gained a greater understanding of the processes, challenges and risks that were faced during the budgeting, procurement, design and build process.

They were very impressed about the amount of work which was carried out with no disruption or cost to the council and residents who lived on the estate. They also saw the energy centre that feeds the Newington estate.

“Thanks to Vital Energi for arranging a useful and informative site visit to Southwark. It was great to see a completed aquifer source heat pump project in central London and explore some of the challenges and benefits of integrating low carbon heat pumps into an existing communal heat network. It provided some food for thought for the Westminster team as they move forwards with their net zero programme,” said Chris Spicer, PSDS Programme Manager for City of London, who works closely with Westminster City Council.

Steve Parsons, Operations Manager at Vital Energi, said:

“It was a pleasure showing some of the consultants from Westminster Council and Chris Spicer from the City of London our Southwark heat pump project. Our work with Southwark Council on this project has been a big accomplishment for us at Vital because we were able to work through the challenges, take risks, during the pandemic and still be successful in decarbonising over 2,000 properties.”

Southwark Council is striving to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030 and as part of its plan it is decarbonising the existing gas-powered heat networks across three large council estates. The heat pump projects will see 2,175 residents at Consort, Newington, and Wyndham benefit from a resilient, reliable heat energy supply, along with improved local air quality and reduced carbon emissions. The project involves 5 water source heat pumps being retrofitted into the existing gas fuelled network, utilising water from the aquifers sat below the ground through constructed boreholes.

Find out more about our ongoing project with Westminster City Council here, which will cut carbon by 1,700 tonnes a year.