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Energy efficiency project at West Bridge Mill
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In 2009 Link was a recipient of the Energy Efficiency Design Awards, which provided £200,000 for a combined heat and power retrofit to be undertaken at West Bridge Mill in Kirkcaldy. I went along to meet some of the people behind the project. Link’s energy and sustainability officer, Colin Reid, told me a bit more about how the system works.
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Transcript
Jane Smernicki:
This is a podcast from Link Group on 25 May 2010. To read a transcript of this podcast, or to hear more Link podcasts, visit www.linkhousing.org.uk.
Jane Smernicki:
In 2009 Link was a recipient of the Energy Efficiency Design Awards, which provided £200,000 for a combined heat and power retrofit to be undertaken at West Bridge Mill in Kirkcaldy. West Bridge Mill is home to LinkLiving’s Fife service, which provides 15 supported flats for young people in the mill and offers tenancy support to other people in their own homes across Fife.
The retrofit project involved replacing the original storage heating system with a combined heat and power unit, which while not only reducing carbon emissions by 124 tonnes a year will provide up to a 70% energy cost saving to young people who stay in the supported flats at the mill.
The new system was unveiled earlier this month, and I went along to meet some of the people behind the project. Link’s energy and sustainability officer, Colin Reid, told me a bit more about how the system works.
Colin Reid:
Originally we had electric storage heating in the flats, we had an immersion cylinder. And the problem with electric storage heating is not only is it expensive for the fuel – electricity – but because it stores heat overnight it’ll emit that heat during the day.
Unfortunately, one of the big complaints about it is that it’s all spent by lunchtime. To get any extra heat you have to put the booster on, which is even more expense.
What we’ve done is removed those and installed a wet radiator system, a bit like you’d have in any household. And that’s fed from a communal combined heat and power boiler. Essentially you have two… think of them as two sort of circuits. One side is the communal circuit, and that’s heated by the combined heat and power boiler. And the second circuit is what’s inside each of the flats. The communal side will be kept at the same temperature, and the CHP boiler will be running and producing electricity and keeping that water at the same 75 degrees, 80 degrees.
Whenever anybody in their flat has a shower or turns the tap on or puts their heating up slightly, it’ll draw water over a heat plate exchanger which will then heat it up to the same level as what the boiler’s providing. In essence it’s exactly the same as a combi boiler in your own home, but without the gas burning in your own property. Heating is a lot cheaper, because it’s just the cost of gas. Added to that we’re generating electricity onsite, which is being used here, so we’re saving, you know, nine, ten pence per kilowatt-hour on that. Better still for the people living in the flats, it’s controllable. It’s instant heat, it lasts all day, and if they’re cold they just turn it up a little bit. One of the criteria for the Energy Efficiency Design Awards was that you reduce fuel poverty, and we expect fuel bills to be down by nearly 70% here, sixty-nine-point-some percent.
Jane Smernicki:
While combined heat and power systems have been around for a few decades now, Link is believed to be Scotland’s first registered social landlord to use the technology in its properties. James Culbertson from Keenan Consultancy, which project-managed the retrofit, explains more.
James Culbertson:
It’s only now, because of the big carbon picture and reduction in carbon to get us down to, you know, major 50% reductions by 2016 – the only way you’re going to achieve that is to look at existing stock. We work with Dunedin Canmore, we work for Port of Leith Housing, Midlothian Council. So we’re doing a very similar project but on a bigger scale with Dunedin Canmore in Edinburgh at the moment.
Jane Smernicki:
Right.
James Culbertson:
Certainly it’s the first… I don’t know if it’s the first, the one I know, one of the first social housing ones in Scotland that’s been done. We’re probably a year behind this down at Edinburgh, because it’s a brand-new build.
Jane Smernicki:
Thanks for listening to this Link podcast. You can hear more at www.linkhousing.org.uk