TWO giant orange cylinders set back on Poole Road are among the latest landmarks in Woking town centre.

With a third one shortly due to complete the set, the insulated cylinders are integral to an energy centre that will serve a large part of the town centre for the next 50 years.

Each one will provide 160,000 litres of stored thermal energy for customers connected to a new district heat network, generating enough heat and power to supply the equivalent of over 2,500 homes.

The centre, to be part of a new ThamesWey headquarters, is due to be completed and ready to start supplying energy in time for the opening of the new Hilton Hotel, shops and residential tower blocks in the Victoria Square redevelopment later this year.

Woking Borough Council leader Ayesha Azad, a ThamesWey Energy director, visited the energy centre recently.

“With Woking’s 2030 carbon-neutral future in mind, the centre has been designed to incorporate new green energy technologies to reduce Woking town centre’s dependence on fossil fuels,” she said. “It will allow growth and development in a sustainable way, utilising low carbon heat to meet the town’s current and future needs.”

Powered by electrically-driven main generators, the orange cylinders are thermal stores that hold reserves of hot water, similar to a domestic hot water cylinder. From these, super-insulated pipes will distribute the heat throughout a network, carrying water out at 62 degrees Celsius, for heating and hot water, with a return pipe carrying cooler water at 30 degrees back to the energy centre.

ThamesWey Energy is a part of the borough council owned ThamesWey group of companies, set up in 1999 to provide a long-term sustainable energy infrastructure in the borough.