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The Castle Park Water Source Heat Pump (WSHP) project in Bristol has been named as the winner of the “Heat Pump City of the Year” award at the 2022 European Heat Pump Association awards held in Brussels earlier this week.

The awards attracted almost 50 of Europe’s highest profile WSHP projects and saw the Castle Park energy centre claim the top spot, shining a spotlight on Bristol’s low-carbon heat network.

Scott Lutton, Vital Energi’s Operations Director – North & Scotland, “We’d like to congratulate Bristol City Council and Goram Homes for their fantastic achievement.  This project demonstrates that WSHPs can plug into existing networks and opens up the possibility of harnessing the Gigawatts of ambient heat in the UK’s rivers, which will play a large part in meeting our net zero targets.

“Heat pumps can lower energy bills and deliver strong carbon savings and Castle Park is one of the first major WSHP projects in the UK, so we’re delighted that it has gained recognition at the European level and hope it will inspire other similar projects going forwards.”

We are delighted to welcome the residents of 163 new Westminster-based homes to the Vital Energi suite of metering and billing services after signing the contract for the Fisherton Street Development.

The Fisherton Street Development is a combination of two blocks of apartments and townhouses and makes up part of the wider Church Street development. Residents will be receiving heating and hot water from an ultra-low air source heat pump with Vital Energi operating and managing the prepayment solution installed on the site. Cooling is also available to some residents, which sees Vital taking meter readings to calculate and issue accurate quarterly bills. Vital’s O&M team also deliver a comprehensive suite of operation and maintenance services.

Vital Energi and Ener-Vate joined 28 other local businesses to take part in Liverpool Waters 8th Dragon Boat Race on the River Mersey.  The joint team finished a heart-breaking 35-hundredths of a second behind first placed Everton in The Community, but the real winners were Claire House Children’s Hospice, after the event raised £35,000.

The event, which attracted 200 contestants, was sponsored by Anchor Group Services, with each team raising a minimum of £750 in sponsorship.   Teams were made up from  businesses across the Liverpool City Region, including tenants, partners and suppliers of Peel L&P’s Liverpool Waters.

Team competed in crews of between seven and 13 people, with each team taking part in three timed races of 260m before the knockout stages began.

Vital Energi are celebrating after two of the apprentices on our Green Energy programme have been named as finalists at two of the industry’s top apprenticeship awards.

Work is now complete on our £6.8m Mechanical and Engineering contract at Berkeley St Edwards’ prestigious Royal Warwick Square development, located in the heart of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The impressive development comprises a collection of impressive one, two and three-bedroom properties with private leisure facilities across six blocks. We’ve just completed the fit-out of Block J, which is made up of 86 dwellings, with a bar area and restaurant, progressing the design from RIBA stage 3 to stage 5.

We delivered essential infrastructure including six plant rooms, a nurse call system, apartment fire suppression systems, home automation system with concierge integration, and a rainwater harvesting system for the site wide irrigation system. We also installed water leak detection within all bathrooms, kitchens, and mechanical cupboards within apartments.

Thanks to our longstanding relationship with Berkeley, we secured a total of six contracts at Royal Warwick Square and have worked on three out of the six blocks – E, H and J.

We’ve seen great progress at the Energetik Heat Network site in Enfield over the last few months.

We have completed all mechanical plant installations within the energy centre, and have progressed the primary low temperature hot water (LTHW) pipework within the boiler hall and thermal stores.

The two 25m high, 6.6m diameter, 750,000 litre thermal stores have been subject to dosed water fill. One store has been hydrotested and we’ll soon begin the insulation process. Formation of the ground floor office area has been completed too, including the viewing deck, which will provide visitors and staff the opportunity to gain a birds-eye view of the boiler hall operation.

Externally, the primary support work for the mesh cladding has been progressed to all elevations and the mesh cladding has commenced to the thermal store enclosure. The vertical flues have been installed within the flue tower, along with the feature lighting which will illuminate the flues.

We have also completed the underground district heating works within the energy centre site, which is now available to connect to the future LTHW source.

Once fully complete, this scheme has the capacity to deliver low carbon heating and hot water to tens of thousands of homes across and beyond Enfield. One of the many developments to benefit from this very-low carbon heat supply will be the 82-hectare Meridian Water development comprising 10,000 new homes, workplaces and a railway station.

Two of Clydebank’s most iconic listed buildings are taking a step towards net zero by connecting to the low-carbon Queens Quay district heating network.

Both Clydebank Town Hall and Clydebank Library are connecting to the heat network which will allow them to take heat from the Queen’s Quay energy centre which takes heat from the River Clyde and pumps it through a water source heat pump to create low-temperature-hot-water.

The Library will have modifications made to its heating system which will include the installation of a 200kW plate heat exchanger installed and Vital Energi will also replace the old heating system with a new radiator circuit. The Town Hall will see a 600kW plate heat exchanger installed as well as upgrades to the pumping system and air handling units.

Scott concludes, “Both of these buildings are over 100 years old, so there is an exciting opportunity to improve the way they use heat. By making these changes the buildings will become much more efficient and, when combined with the low-carbon heat from the water source heat pumps, will reduce their carbon emissions drastically, making another important step towards West Dunbartonshire Council’s net zero journey.”

We have been working to develop and maintain Loughborough University’s district heating network for over 25 years and recently began work on another project, aligned to its commitment to decarbonise its estate to meet the Government’s zero carbon target by 2050, with considerable progress by 2035.

The University are demolishing the John Cooper and John Clements buildings and are planning to replace them with a multi-purpose teaching facility.  Phase 1 will see Vital Energi create a 350m district heating extension which diverts around the demolition site and will allow all connected buildings to continue receiving heat.  Phase 2 will see the buildings earmarked for demolition disconnected from the network and a new connection to the Matthew Arnold building will be created.  Both phases are being delivered at the same time to minimise disruption to the campus.

The instillation is intricate, due to the route clashing with existing services, such as high voltage electricity and water. This saw much of the excavation work done by hand to ensure there was no disruption to service.  Whilst the works will be undertaken during the summer break, the University campus is still busy with graduation and sporting events and Vital Energi worked with the client to minimise any disruption to the campus.

Works are currently underway and progressing well, with the project expected to be delivered over a 9-week period.

Vital Energi have been awarded a contract by the City of London Corporation to guarantee energy savings of over £480,000 a year and carbon savings of over 1,000 tonnes a year, helping the governing body of the Square Mile to take major strides towards the ambitious target of net zero carbon emissions by 2027 for its corporate estate.

The project will be delivered through the Greater London Authority’s Retrofit Accelerator framework designed to help make London’s non-domestic public buildings and assets more energy efficient, and the works will be funded via the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS).

Vital Energi will deliver multi-technology solutions through Energy Conservation Measures, which will improve energy performance within five of the City’s most iconic buildings, including the Barbican Centre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the City Corporation’s Guildhall headquarters.

Energy Conservation Measures will include pipe distribution repairs, ventilation distribution repairs, pipe insulation, Air Handling Unit EC fan retrofit, LED lighting, and metering, to reduce energy use, unnecessary heat loss and help improve comfort conditions for building users.

As well as upgrading and optimising Building Management Systems (BMS), Vital Energi will also install Vital View, which is a BMS performance monitoring system. This will help deliver continuous improvement and drive energy efficiency, carbon reduction and help enhance future projects through gaining a detailed understanding of building operations and usage characteristics.

City of London Corporation Finance Committee Chairman Jamie Ingham Clark said:

“This partnership with Vital Energi will enable us to take practical, positive, sustainable steps to make our buildings more energy efficient, delivering the twin benefits of reducing carbon emissions and saving money.

“The project will play a significant role in enabling us to achieve the ambitious targets set out in our Climate Action Strategy, which commits us to achieving net zero carbon status in our buildings by 2027 and across our investments and supply chain by 2040.”

Vital Energi have been awarded the £12m design and build contract for block A, the first of seven blocks of Berkeley Homes’ Oval Village development, located in Central London.

Comprising 1,309 new homes, Oval Village by Berkeley Homes, spans seven buildings, with residents-only leisure facilities, over 15,000 square metres of community, commercial, office and retail space, including an on-site Tesco.  Located adjacent to the iconic Oval international cricket ground, the development also boasts a hectare of landscaped gardens, creating tranquility within the heart of London.

Thanks to their long-standing relationship with Berkeley Homes spanning 15 years, Vital Energi once again welcomed the opportunity to practice their sustainable energy expertise through their in-house mechanical and electrical design team, taking the project from the initial RIBA stage 4, through to RIBA stage 5 for the design, install and commissioning on Oval Village block A.

We have completed the design for the temporary energy centre, which is located on level one at the heart of block A, as well as the design and build of a buried district heating system, the ground floor switch room, which includes landlord and residential panels, the generator room, leisure facilities, and two floors of office space.

In addition, we will also be installing the mechanical and electrical infrastructure for 344 apartments which are serviced by 5 cores and rise to 18 floors, and the on-site Tesco and marketing suite.

Graham Cook, Project Director at Berkeley Homes, commented:

“We look forward to working with Vital on this complex first phase of the masterplan. Vital worked hard to secure the tender and have shown pragmatism and innovation in tackling the challenges so far.”

Oval Village block A is due for completion in August 2022.