BALANCED ENERGY NETWORK | LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY The BEN being trialled at LSBU serves two buildings Intranets for heat The balanced energy network at London South Bank University has been part-funded by InnovateUK to help accelerate the creation of smart heat-sharing networks. These balance the heating and cooling needs of different buildings and act as a virtual energy store to help the National Grid match supply and demand. Andy Pearson reports F or more than 50 years, the UK has relied primarily on natural gas to heat its buildings. That will need to change if the country is to transition from a reliance on fossil fuels towards low carbon energy sources, to meet its national and international commitments to tackle climate change. It will not be easy: Decarbonising heat may be the greatest challenge we face in meeting our legally binding carbon targets, the government warned in A Future Heat Framework for Heating Buildings, published in December last year. One way in which the challenge of delivering low carbon heat could be overcome is with a new type of district heating system called a Balanced Energy Network (BEN). Developed by Icax, working with London South Bank University (LSBU) on a project part-funded by Innovate UK, the system is being trialled on LSBUs south-east London campus. A BEN works by circulating water at ambient groundwater temperature through a piped loop to buildings on the network. Each building uses a heat pump to extract heat from the network for heating or to reject heat into it when the buildings need cooling. It does not matter where heat comes from. Were doing experiments on pulling heat out of sewers, data centres and other buildings; all we need to know is how much heat it gives us and the profile, says Dr Aaron Gillich, associate professor in energy and building services engineering at LSBU. The more you add, the more robust the heat network its like an intranet for heat. By managing the use of available energy, a BEN offers the efficiency benefits of a heat network without the air pollution created by gas combustion in dense urban areas. What makes the system at LSBU unique is that, as well as transferring heat, it has been designed to respond to price signals from the electricity Grid. It can turn off electrical plant, such as heat pumps, to smooth peaks in demand or to store electricity as heat when there is a Grid surplus, for example, at night when the wind is blowing and wind farms areactive. Everything from the heat pumps, the heat network, the buildings served by the system, and the thermal storage becomes 22 May 2019 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE May19 pp22-25 Ben Supp.indd 22 26/04/2019 15:27