News
04/11/2024
The Rohan Short team was fortunate to receive a behind-the-scenes tour of Castle Park Energy Centre in Bristol today, home to the UK’s largest single-harbour water source heat pump. We were very happy to be joined by colleagues from Stride Treglown, Ridge, Alder King, and Hoare Lea.
The energy centre is operated by Vattenfall, in collaboration with Bristol City Leap, an innovative partnership between Bristol City Council and Ameresco, which will accelerate green energy investment in Bristol and help to decarbonise the whole city.
Over the next five years, Bristol City Leap will deliver nearly £500 million in low-carbon energy infrastructure, such as solar, wind, heat networks, heat pumps, and energy efficiency measures—all of which will help Bristol meet its target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.
Here are some of our key takeaways from the tour...
- Completed in 2022, the energy centre provides 3MW of heat to Bristol’s homes and businesses, enough to heat 2,500 homes.
- Water can be drawn from the harbour at a rate of over 150l/s, heat is then extracted, and the water is returned to the harbour.
- Because the water temperature is generally the same all year round, typically 12-15 degrees, the water source heat pump at Castle Park is thought to be much more efficient than a comparable air source heat pump, which would be more susceptible to fluctuating temperatures, particularly in winter months.
- Ammonia is used as a refrigerant, which has a direct global warming potential of zero and is carefully monitored to minimise the risk of any leakage.
- Vattenfall is working to connect the individual networks around the city to provide additional resilience for customers.
- Water source heat pumps can provide up to 3x thermal energy as the electrical energy used to power them, making them much more efficient than other heating methods.
- Vattenfall is continuously decarbonising the network and has a roadmap to decommission all fossil assets by 2030.
