First phase of Leicester district heating completed
4 Feb 2013
Leicester, UK – Cofely, a GDF SUEZ company, has recently completed the first phase of the Leicester District Energy Scheme, enabling thousands of homes, as well as council-owned and other buildings in Leicester, to be provided with environmentally friendly energy.
The Leicester District Energy Scheme is a 25-year £15mn partnership between Leicester City Council and Cofely District Energy.
Spanning six city estates, the system is the largest of its kind in the UK to be installed in one phase. It uses a combination of over 5MW of low carbon gas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) and upgraded biomass boilers.
This will help achieve carbon savings of around 12,000 tonnes per year by 2014, said Cofely, which anticipates these carbon savings rising to more than 20,000 tonnes per year by 2020.
As well as upgraded biomass boilers, the development features a new 3.2MW CHP engine at the University of Leicester, that will also provide heating to several city council buildings including De Montfort Hall, the Town Hall, Moat Community College and Leicester Central Library. It will also provide heat to HMP Leicester.
Work to lay the 7km of pipework required took around 18 months, but was completed five weeks ahead of schedule.
