50 years of decentralised energy celebrated at the ADE Awards

The Association for Decentralised Energy celebrated fifty years of innovation, best practice and inspiring engineering at its 50th Anniversary Awards and Dinner at the Science Museum last night in the company of 400 special guests.

Sponsored by Centrica Business Solutions, the Awards celebrated outstanding schemes that have made a dramatic impact across district heating, combined heat and power and demand side energy services.

The Association was delighted to welcome Margot James MP, Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility to address our guests. In her address she said combined heat and power, district heating and demand side response would play a key role in helping the UK to decarbonise. Margot James MP also welcomed the work of the Association’s Heat Network Task Force and said she looked forward to the results.

The Industrial Project of the Decade Award, sponsored by Ricardo AEA, was awarded to Edina for their work with R&R Ice Cream.

Combined heat and power was installed at the site to improve energy security but also increased the site’s production by 20% as well as reducing its energy bill by £400k and saving 4800 tonnes of carbon a year.

Birmingham’s District Energy Scheme, installed and operated by Engie, scooped the award for Public Sector Project of the Decade.

Since its launch 10 years ago Birmingham’s District Energy Scheme has grown to provide 60GWh heat, 30GWh electricity and 9GWh cooling, and will soon be demonstrating the first commercial interoperation of small bio-energy generation on a city-wide energy network.

The Homes and Communities Project of the Decade Award, sponsored by Pinnacle Power, was presented to London Borough of Islington for Bunhill Heat and Power Network.

Since being installed in 2012 the network has helped reduced energy bills by 10% for over 850 homes and two leisure centres, and saved 2000 tonnes of carbon.

The Commercial Project of the Decade Award sought to celebrate projects that benefited the energy user in several ways from cost and carbon savings to reliability and innovation.

The Commercial Award was presented to Engie for Southampton District Energy Scheme, the scheme, established in the 1980s has expanded to over 14km of pipework to supply heating and cooling to a large shopping centre, 2,500 homes, offices, a university, the police and many more.

One of the most coveted awards of the night, the Innovation Award of the Decade, sponsored by Vital Energi, was presented to Guru Systems and FairHeat for their work in using performance data to radically improve heat network efficiency.

Developed in 2014 Guru Pinpoint is now being used on over 75 heat networks serving 5600 homes. The software allows operators to monitor networks in real time to identify costly inefficiencies and reduce carbon emissions; it is a breakthrough for problem legacy schemes.

The Integrated Energy Project of the Decade Award, sponsored by Clarke Energy, was scooped by CityWest Homes for their electrically heated tower block project – Cyclo Control Towers.

Recognising an opportunity to aggregate demand from 800 homes, the team at CityWest Homes have been able to reduce electricity tariffs by 15%; a fantastic bill reduction for residents.

Sponsored by Heat Trust, the Customer Engagement Award of the Decade was presented to Switch2.

Switch2 provides metering and billing services to over 70,000 customers and has a company ethos to provide systems and products that are benchmarked against industry good practice to make the lives of their residents easier.

The final award of the night, the Visionary Project Award received the most entries out of any category. Sponsored by SAV Systems this Award highlights projects that look forward and dramatically change the vision of our energy industry for tomorrow.

The Award was presented to Gateshead Council for Gateshead District Energy Scheme, a truly visionary project that provides heat through 3km of pipe and electricity through a private wire network to domestic, commercial and public sector customers.

The Scheme is one of the most unique projects in the country as it also offers peak power generation to help balance the grid through a mixture of battery storage and combined heat and power with heat storage.

REstore were also highly commended in this category for their work with Flextreo – a game-changing solution that brings energy market opportunities right to the desk of energy managers across the country.

The welcome drinks, which took place in the Science Museum’s energy hall, were kindly sponsored by Edina.

Source: Association for Decentralised Energy