Getting it right from the ground up

Where the location is suitable, the retrofitting of solar, heat pumps, or biomass boilers to existing systems can dramatically reduce running costs “without too much disruption”, Nigel Jefferson, the company’s commercial sales director in the UK, told HEJ.

Admittedly, most health estate renewable heating installations are for new builds; mainly extension projects and nursing homes. However, the long-awaited launch of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) should be motivating health estates managers to review the feasibility of renewable heating retrofits as part of long-term energy planning. So how should they go about this? First of all, they should look at the energy requirement of the building, and factor in planning requirements, legislation, and any corporate targets such as zero carbon. The initial step is to create an energy requirement model which identifies the customer’s gas, oil, or electricity consumption over the past two to three years. From this, an average energy value/kWh figure can be calculated, which will help define both the technologies that are appropriate, and those that are not. Specifying the right renewable products, or mix of products, for commercial buildings is not a simple task, because, even within a hospital site, every building and its use is different. There is never a single right answer, so managers should not assume that because a colleague at a different NHS Trust has gone down one route, it will be the right one for their facility. The selection of a heating system needs to incorporate current and planned future energy use, building characteristics such as location, how the building has been constructed, space constraints, fuel provision, and access. It is also affected by whether a high or low level of interaction and maintenance of the system is required, and, of course, what capital is available for the purchase of the equipment?

Renewable technology selection