New district heating schemes for Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent

Britain’s district energy sector is to be expanded with new schemes in Sheffield and Stoke-on-Trent – the latter to be based on geothermal energy.

E.ON has announced that three Sheffield organisations have agreed to connect to its new £20mn low carbon district heating network to be built in the Lower Don valley. Powered by the heat from E.ON’s soon-to-be-completed Blackburn Meadows renewable energy plant, the additional investment will see an 8 km district heating pipe network supplying low carbon heat to South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield Forgemasters' quarter mile long South Machine Shop, as well as sports and leisure facilities operated by Sheffield International Venues.

More customers are due to announce soon and hundreds, if not thousands, of residential customers could follow, for newly built homes along the pipe route, says E.ON.

The energy plant, currently nearing completion in the north-west of the city on the site of the former Tinsley Power Station and cooling towers, will have a generating capacity of 29 MWe. By capturing a further 25 MW of heat energy, which would otherwise be lost, the energy plant is more efficient.

Don Leiper, Director of New Business at E.ON, said: ‘Blackburn Meadows is already designed to be an efficient and sustainable power generation source, fuelled by waste wood. By capturing the heat and providing it for use by nearby businesses we are effectively almost doubling the efficiency of the plant and the environmental benefits to customers.’

Meanwhile, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office has announced a £113mn City Deal for Stoke-on-Trent, of which £20mn will support the development of a city-wide district heating network fed by deep geothermal energy. This is the largest ever government investment in geothermal energy. The project should produce up to 45 GWh of heat energy per annum, lowering local heating costs by up to 10% and avoiding the emission of around 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum.