LOW CARBON HEATING | COMMUNIHEAT HEATING MADE TO MEASURE A digital twin of an East Sussex village is being created by Buro Happold to assess how demand for heating and electric vehicle charging will affect the electrification strategy for rural communities. Andy Pearson reports B uro Happold is using the village of Barcombe, in East Sussex, to develop a roadmap to show how rural communities off the gas grid can switch to low carbon electric heating in a planned and affordable way. The consultant is working with local community energy group Ovesco, electricity distributor UK Power Networks (UKPN), and Community Energy South, under the CommuniHeat partnership. The key output from this project will be a publication on how to approach decarbonising heating in off-grid rural communities across the UK. Phil Proctor, associate director, Buro Happold Energy, says the biggest potential barrier to the decarbonisation of heat in Barcombe, as with most rural villages, is a lack of capacity in the electricity network. He sums the situation up succinctly: Barcombe is a rural village of 700 homes; it is not on the gas grid, it burns oil for heating, locals travel higher-than-average miles, and its located on a weak part of the electricity network. Proctor says having UKPN on board is key to making the transition to low carbon heating affordable. We know well need to invest in the electricity network, but we need to do so in a planned way to minimise the number of interventions [and, hence, cost to consumers], rather than UKPN reacting on an ad hoc basis, he explains. In Barcombe, the focus of decarbonising heat is on individual choice, but supported by access to community services, such as community assets that may include heat networks and renewable generation. A range of low carbon heating technologies is available, including low-temperature heat pumps, high-temperature heat pumps and direct electric boilers. Which goes into a home, and how it performs, will determine how much electricity is required and when. In an unplanned approach, the network has no influence or sight of consumer choices and yet it has to be able to react and respond to them, Proctor says. To help establish the potential impacts of the different heating technologies and of additional energy efficiency measures, a digital twin of the village has been created (Figure 1). You have to bring all the data into one environment to link it together; that way, you can collectively make the right decisions, explains Proctor. Populating the model with the heat demand for each building has been a challenge. Publicly available data is bad in terms of predicting what is needed; it has to be refined with data from the community, 36 January 2022 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Jan 22 pp36-38 Community heat.indd 36 23/12/2021 13:56