Seeking opportunities, catching easy wins 

Identifying the first things to look for to harness heat from your parks 

Generation and Demand – Strategic perspective 

Understanding the ‘obvious’ opportunities that are worth investigating further may help avoid a more complicated stage of systematic GIS opportunity identification. Two factors are important in identifying these opportunities: 

  • ease of access to the heat generation potential of the park

  • ease of capturing the heat from the park to supply local demand 

Generation 

When thinking how easy (and cheap) it is to access the park’s generation potential, you need to know what is there, how valued it is, and what else is planned. Installing heat-collecting pipework will be cheaper if installed horizontally, and less disruptive but more expensive if installed vertically. Also, it might be: 

  • Easy to install within a body of water

  • Easy if installed horizontally as part of other groundworks or other renovation or restoration projects (such as installing drainage or new pitch surfaces)

  • Easy if installed in an unloved area (or brownfield site) if restoration works are factored in

  • Moderately easy if installed in a small part of a larger area

  • Difficult in a heavily used or valued area

  • Not worth thinking about if it affects heritage trees, playgrounds or other locally valued assets. 

Demand 

Type of heat

When thinking about how easy (and cheap) it is to supply thermal energy from a park, you need to know a bit about the building (or asset)’s energy needs. Constant, low-grade heat (or cooling), such as that needed for a swimming pool or a nursing home (or cooling for a data centre), is ideal; high electrical demand (such as that needed for a supermarket) is not going to be so relevant. 

Heat distribution system 

You may also need to find out a bit about how the building’s heating system works. If it runs on gas, which is cheap, then it is unlikely to compete financially. So a non-financial driver, such as reducing carbon emissions, is needed to include that building in your plans. There are also likely to be costs associated with energy efficiency measures and/or upgrading the existing heating system (pipes and radiators) – so there are opportunities when heating infrastructure upgrades are planned or necessary. 

Access 

You also need to think about access: can you run a pipe directly from the park into the building’s plant room (does it even have a plant room?) or would you need to cross a dual carriageway and a railway line – if so, you may be better off looking elsewhere.