Bespoke efficiency

Remeha Commercial, flue gas heat recovery, heat pump, boiler, space heating
Bespoke heating solutions — Mark Northcott.

The arrival of new heating equipment should mean higher heating efficiencies and lower carbon emissions. But do it always deliver? Mark Northcott of Remeha Commercial looks at how bespoke systems could be the answer to plugging the performance gap.

We only have to look around us to see how rapidly the advance of technology has changed the way we live. The arrival of smart phones and iPads, for example, has transformed how we communicate and do business by offering greater and easier access to information.

The technological revolution has had an impact on all sectors of industry.

In the heating industry, the introduction of a range of new renewable technologies and new generations of traditional heating equipment has changed the face of the commercial plant room. As commercial buildings are responsible for 18% of the UK’s carbon emissions, improving their energy performance is important if we are to meet our steep carbon-reduction target of 80% by 2050. The higher efficiencies offered by these new products are designed to help businesses combat rising fuel prices, help slow climate change and strengthen UK national security.

At Lake House Care Home in Banbury, the bespoke Fusion Hybrid system, which combines gas absorption heat pumps and high-efficiency gas-condensing technology with a fully-integrated building control system, was tailored still further to meet the care home’s requirement for constant, reliable heating and hot-water delivery. A solar buffer was included to raise the temperature of the cold-water feed, thereby lowering energy demand.

Heating is the largest user of energy of all the services, accounting for as much as 60% of a building’s total energy use and 40% of its carbon emissions, according to the Carbon Trust. As a result, tighter building-control regulations are now in place for both new and existing buildings to reduce energy consumption and lower the carbon footprint of the property.

In new-build developments, high-performance renewable technologies such as biomass boilers and heat pumps are widely specified as the prime source of energy for heating and hot water, often with a gas condensing boiler operating alongside to ensure reliable heat delivery.

In existing non-domestic buildings, where a significant proportion of the heating is provided by commercial boiler plant, complementary renewable technology ‘bolt-ons’ and passive flue-gas heat-recovery devices are increasingly specified alongside gas-fired condensing boilers for further reductions in carbon emissions and energy consumption that will help businesses and organisations meet their environmental commitments and achieve greater profitability through lower operating costs.

With all new technologies, there is often a steep initial learning curve, and hiccups are common at the outset. The challenge for the heating industry has been the performance gap between thermal modelling and actual energy consumption. This has materialised itself in installations where the renewable equipment has appeared not to operate at the predicted outputs due to poor specification, installation and commissioning — resulting in higher-than-expected operating costs. Equally, on many refurbishment projects, the condensing technology installed fails to achieve the anticipated efficiencies and savings. While it can be tempting to blame the equipment itself, the cause is often due to poor system design and insufficient understanding of how to achieve the higher efficiency.

This is where manufacturers can help. Rising to the challenge to improve the energy efficiency of our new and existing buildings, manufacturers are introducing bespoke heating solutions that draw on their understanding of how to achieve the best results from their heating products to achieve the higher efficiencies and maximise the savings that can be achieved.

From complex bespoke bivalent heating systems that combine renewable and traditional technologies to the bespoke design of a skid system for gas condensing boilers, ‘going bespoke’ offers clear advantages over the ‘off-the-shelf’ alternative.

Opting for a bespoke designed and manufactured skid system extends the options in floor planning design, which means that specifiers can match the heat output demand more accurately

Firstly, all the components come from the same manufacturer and are therefore designed to operate together effectively and efficiently. Secondly, a bespoke solution, by its nature, will enable more accurate matching of the individual heating requirements of a particular building. Bespoke solutions offer considerable time savings as there is no need to research and order compatible parts or components. Finally, the bespoke system will allow for greater flexibility in floor planning design.

Key to the success of any system design are the smart controls which ensure that the individual technologies operate at their maximum efficiency.

With bivalent bespoke systems, opt for solutions that offer a specially-configured, scalable building-management control system as this not only fully integrates the components for optimum operation, but on old systems will integrate the new equipment into the existing system to maximise carbon and energy savings.

An optional extra would be the addition of an energy-management system to provide energy managers with useful carbon and energy data and building operators a means of closer monitoring the operation of the new system.

Smart system design is essential if we are to become more energy efficient with our heating. Bespoke solutions offer a straightforward, quality approach to substantial time, energy and carbon savings, benefitting the entire design team as well as the end-user.

Mark Northcott is managing director of Remeha Commercial.

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