Glasgow Commonwealth Games’ Athletes Village

City Legacy Consortium appointed Vital Energi, under instructions from Glasgow City Council, to design, install, commission, test and operate a bespoke low carbon energy system for the 2014 Commonwealth Games’ Athletes Village.

The system comprises modern Combined Heat and Power (CHP) technology housed in a purpose built new Energy Centre building. Vital Energi has also designed, supplied and installed a 28 km network of buried pre-insulated district heating pipes to connect 704 homes in the Athletes Village, the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome (formerly the National Indoor Sports Arena and Velodrome) and a 120-bed Care Home to the energy centre.

The Energy Centre houses an 844 kW CHP engine, three 3 MW back-up gas boilers and a 70,000 litre thermal store. It has been future proofed to include capacity for an additional CHP engine, boiler and thermal store in order to accommodate connection to the 750 homes planned for the Legacy Phase of the development.

When fully operational it will also generate and export electricity to the national grid.

Benefits

• Helping to reduce overall Games carbon emissions by 95 per cent to make them “the greenest games ever”
• Achieving aims of Sustainable Glasgow Report 2010
• Future-proofed for further expansion
• Potential to interconnect with other district heating schemes across Glasgow in the future

Source: ADE