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Portsmouth Water has joined forces with a garden village development to heat homes with water from its Hoads Hill underground reservoir as part of a low-carbon energy network pilot.
The trial will initially serve 700 homes as well as commercial premises and community buildings before being expanded to 6,000 properties.
The low carbon heat network when installed at the sustainable homes project in Hampshire, will be the largest deployment of water-source heating and cooling technology in the UK.
Water will be drawn from the naturally warm reservoir and processed through a heat exchanger in an energy centre before reaching the ambient network.
Chief executive of Portsmouth Water, Bob Taylor, said: “The water that supplies our service reservoir at Hoads Hill comes from an underground aquifer that has the capacity to supply natural energy to the low-carbon heat network serving the development. Longer term, the design principles here are a blueprint for future environmentally led developments right across the UK.”
The network is intended to provide cooling during warmer times of the year by reversing the process and expelling heat back into the reservoir. Heat can be transferred between buildings via an energy exchange by supplying excess heat to other buildings in the network.
Last year, the Welborne garden village project received funding from the Green Heat Network fund to deliver 4.4GWh of heat, hot water and cooling to homes in the development.
When complete, the developers anticipate the network will save more than 272,000 tonnes of carbon in its first 25 years, compared with gas boilers.
Following a study into the feasibility of using reservoir water to provide heating and cooling for homes, Portsmouth Water and site developer Buckland commissioned Last Mile Heat to deliver and manage the energy network.
Mark Thistlethwayte, chair of Buckland Group, said energy efficiency and climate change resilience was at the heart of the garden village development.
“Being involved in Welborne for the long-term both financially and practically, Buckland is taking a different development approach to mainstream housebuilders. We are designing and developing the community holistically, so we can take strategic decisions to invest in innovative technology and deploy it at scale.”
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