Mitsubishi Electric's Ecodan heat pump technology is helping a new eco-friendly housing development in London which will get the energy for its heating and hot water directly from the Thames.
Officially launched yesterday (21 October), Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, visited the site to switch on the heat pump-based heating system.

The £70 million mixed-use development has been created by NHP Leisure Developments on the site of a former power station in the centre of Kingston upon Thames and 200 metres from the banks of the river. It includes 56 homes called Kingston Heights along with 81 luxury private apartments. The 137 apartments, built by United House, will all benefit from the cutting-edge heat pump system that harvests naturally stored energy from the River Thames.

The community heating scheme takes renewable heat from the sun, stored in the river water and boosts it to the temperature required for the underfloor heating and hot water needed by residents.

Up to 13 million litres of water each day can be drawn by the system, which is the equivalent of five Olympic-sized swimming pools. The river water passes through a state-of-the-art, two-stage filtration process that ensures no marine life can enter the system.

Inside a specially-built plant room adjacent to the river, the water passes through high-efficiency heat exchangers and, once the low grade heat has been harvested, the water is immediately fed back into the river, untreated in any way.

The heat exchangers transfer this low grade heat from the river water to an internal 'closed' loop water system and this is then carried 200 metres to a plant room in the apartment building, where Mitsubishi Electric's advanced heat pump technology boosts the low grade heat to the temperature required for the apartments' heating and hot water.

Towards the end of 2014, a new 142-bedroom hotel will also be completed at the site and this will increase the efficiency of the heating scheme even further. The Doubletree by Hilton hotel will derive all its heating and hot water, as well as its cooling, from the open water heat pump installation. Heat recovered from cooling the individual hotel rooms will be reclaimed and returned to the community system to support the heating and hot water demand for the whole site.

Ed Davey said: 'Kingston Heights is a great example of how sustainable solutions can help power entire communities. I want to see a community energy revolution where projects like this are the norm, not the exception. This project will not only transform the waterfront area in Kingston, but also means residents' bills will be lower than if they used gas.'