4 minute read
The retrofit village
e retrofit village
A Cambridgeshire village is leading the way with a rural heat network that is powered by entirely renewable technology
Advertisement
WORDS JANET HALL, LINEUNDRAWN
Project Board Council
© Cambridgeshire County Council T he term ‘district heating’, typically prompts thoughts of large urban areas full of new homes that might only need heating on a frosty day. Suburban housing, rural villages and conservation areas, are unlikely to cross your mind. Yet, a village in East Cambridgeshire is set to change that: it leads the UK in delivering not just a rural heat network but one that is powered by entirely renewable technology.
Swaffham Prior’s picturesque high street is lined by Grade II listed properties, a pub, school and two churches. The village has many house types, having undergone spurts of generational expansion over the past four decades. The latest phase, delivered five years ago by Swaffham Prior Community Land Trust includes eight homes each fitted with air source heat pumps. It was this project that caused trust directors Emma Fletcher and Mike Barker to consider what a future without oil would look like for the village. What risks would the future pricing of oil pose to those on lower incomes? Could every household afford an air source heat pump, and is every house suitable?
Technical achievement
After two years of resident engagement, a heat network designed to work for every home is now just weeks away from construction. The renewable energy centre, to be located beyond the conservation area of the village in an agricultural barn, will contain a series of air source and ground source heat pumps connected to 130 boreholes. In winter, the ground source heat pumps will supply up to 1.5MW and in summer, the system
LEGAL EXPERTS IN THE GROWTH REGION
switches to air source heat pumps for hot water supply. This dual-energy supply will guarantee temperatures outputs in the heating systems of up to 72°C, even in 0°C, giving residents a similar temperature output to a conventional gas or oil boiler. This technical achievement means that homes will be able to plug their existing central heating system into the 7km heat network running through the village.
Among the 300 homes in Swaffham Prior, are 47 listed properties, the oil super-users of the village. Clunch walls, thatched roofs, limewash finishes and single-glazed windows; leaky buildings are commonplace. To help address this, a series of heat meters have been installed in a range of properties, houses from the 1700s, 1900s, and 1970s (live data is available to view at www. heatingswaffhamprior.co.uk). The older properties, regularly have a 15-20kWh heating demand during winter, that means a standard 24kWh oil boiler must work flat-out at its maximum efficiency of 85% (20.4kWh). An off-the-shelf individual air source heat pump, typically low temperature, up to 15kWh (100% efficiency) is, unfortunately, not going to be the instant answer for that older property. Triggering a property retrofit; more or bigger radiators, which may compromise the character of the property, sensitive insulation and draught exclusion to reduce the peak kWh requirement, an extra heat pump or supplementary heating may ultimately be required – which would also have planning consequences. All in all, a fine balancing act that requires a motivated homeowner and expert knowledge.
With oil prices relatively low today, there is little financial incentive to retrofit a listed home and install an air source heat pump. The Green Homes Grant, enabled up to £10,000 (with conditions), is a tokenistic gesture to the costs involved in retrofitting a listed property (and has now been cancelled because of poor take-up). In the UK’s drive toward net-zero carbon by 2050, domestic heating is a contributor that can’t be ignored: it is responsible for around 15% of the country’s carbon emissions.
More pressure
A ban on new homes connecting to the gas grid, and some European boiler manufacturers switching production from oil and gas, to hydrogen boilers or heat interface units, shows the direction of travel expected. With no timeline set out in law for our fossil-fuel exit, there is further pressure added to the homeowner’s decision: Do you leap now, before anything happens to oil prices and while some funding is available (the controlled exit)? Or do you wait, see what happens, hope that more grants come and no carbon-pricing is introduced hitting UK oil prices, and perhaps then find yourself buying a green solution in an inflated market?
It’s a question that many homeowners won’t even realise that they need to think about, but it’s one that the communal effort of Swaffham Prior has answered. The high-temperature system levels out the playing field so that all can have access to net-zero heating and maintain the incentive to reduce heating costs through energy efficiency improvements. Cambridgeshire County Council, Swaffham Prior Community Land Trust and the project team have worked with residents extensively, taking conversations in the village from ‘Why do we even have to do anything?’ to the fine technical, legal and financial detail of the project. This co-design process has resulted in an infrastructure that addresses the two-core project aims: to take the village off its oil dependency; and to address local fuel poverty.
It is looking promising: over the past four months, the Swaffham Prior team has been contacted by more than 20 oilreliant villages throughout the UK, keen to achieve something similar.
Residents visiting the energy centre
Archaeological survey
© LineUndrawn
Starting out
The first steps for any parish council or community land trust should be to:
Contact the local Energy Hub (https://www.energyhub.org.uk/) Enquire about the Rural Community Energy Fund (https://www.
energyhub.org.uk/rural-community-
energy-fund/introduction/)
