Pennoyer's & sustainable energy
Pennoyer's has gone green. Not literally, you understand. Green energy. Renewable energy.
Both the ground source heat pump, and the air source heat pump have been installed.
The ground source heat pump, or GHSP as people call it because the full name's too much of a mouthful, is a huge piece of equipment that uses heat collected from four 80m boreholes in the ground, to warm the building via underfloor heating. By using a gas, it's able to uplift the heat from the ground by a factor of about 3.5 and pump that out. Amazing stuff.
The air source heat pumps live on the roof and were actually installed for comfort cooling in the IT suite and Internet cafe. They work broadly like your fridge, though in the winter they're run in reverse so they pump heat into the room, rather than taking it out. From a user perspective, you simply set the room thermostat, and let the pump work out what it has to do to achieve your required temperature.
Both these devices are hugely expensive, and it's unlikely that many domestic buildings could justify their capital cost - payback would take decades... However, that's one of the benefits of being publicly funded to a great degree: we don't have to recover our capital costs, so payback doesn't apply. Instead, we can reduce our carbon footprint, and our utility bills, thanks to the generosity of our funders.
And not a wind turbine in sight!
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