Kensa Heat Pumps and Westward Housing Group have won the South West Regional Project of the Year at the recent Regional Green Deal & ECO Awards in Exeter for their innovative heating upgrade scheme in Holsworthy, Devon.

The project was recognised alongside tough competition which included entries from British Gas and City Energy South Wales.

The award-winning entry from Kensa Heat Pumps and Westward involved the upgrade of electric night storage heating to UK-manufactured ground source heat pumps in flats at Croft House, Holsworthy. The scheme features an innovative system design that has never been used before in social housing flats, a ‘micro heat network’ which sees the flats connected to a communal system that extracts the heat from the ground to provide hot water and heating into tenants’ homes via individual ground source heat pumps inside each property.

Croft House’s rural location in the South West enabled the works to attract financial support from EDF Energy through the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), which following recent changes, is now able to support heat networks.  

Kensa’s commercial director, Chris Davis, said: “With the non-Domestic RHI and the ECO able to sit alongside one another, the financial case is a compelling one, especially when compared with the alternative options. For social housing providers, a retrofit ground source heat network that’s able to attract ECO funding, like that at Croft House, will present a solution that is both cost effective and provides a significantly more attractive rate of return under the non-Domestic stream of the RHI than, for example, fitting individual air source heat pumps under the Domestic RHI.”

Many tenants are reporting that their heating bills have halved since the ground source heat pumps were installed by Kensa.

Westward and Kensa Heat Pumps’ retrofit scheme at Croft House is also shortlisted for Innovative Energy-Efficient Project at the Environment & Energy Awards 2015.

Pictured (L to R) are: Phil Smith (Westward Housing), Carol Smith (Westward Housing), David Broom (Kensa Heat Pumps) and Chris Davis (Kensa Heat Pumps)