WOKING will become a national leader in low-carbon heating, thanks to a £9.4 million grant from the Government.

ThamesWey Energy’s plans to expand and decarbonise the supply of heat to the town centre have been recognised by the funding, which was secured through the Heat Networks Investment Project.

A heat network is a distribution system of insulated pipes taking heat from a central source and delivering it to a series of buildings. The Woking project supplies heat to public sector, commercial and residential customers.

Under the national scheme – which aims to prompt a move away from fossil fuels and encourage the UK’s energy independence – low-carbon heat sources, such as heat pumps and energy from waste, will be supported.

Central to the project is ThamesWey’s Poole Road energy and cooling centre, easily identifiable by its two bright orange cylinders.

“They are thermal stores, heat batteries each containing 167,000 litres of hot water,” said Sam Pepper, ThamesWey’s environmental projects manager. “Like a hot water cylinder you might have at home, but on a town centre scale. They store heat energy which helps generation equipment to work more consistently and efficiently.”

The system is already operational, supplying heat to Victoria Place’s shops, residential tower blocks and the Hilton Hotel, distributing heat as hot water through a network of buried insulated pipes.

“The network is constructed,” Sam added, “although most additional connections will require extending the buried pipework, which is supported by this fund.

“The funds will also support the integration of the first renewable heat sources, commercial- size air source heat pumps, to supplement the use of combined heat and power. The network has flexibility to adapt to whatever changes we might face in the future by simply making upgrades in one place [Poole Road], rather than in each building.

“Technology that can be incorporated in the future includes recovering waste heat, heat pumps, biofuels, hydrogen, and more, which will reflect whatever changes we face over the next 50 years.

“And the site is futureproofed to host a third thermal store, with all necessary pipework connections and foundations. This will be installed when the network expands to supply more buildings and it becomes necessary to store a larger amount of heat.

“In terms of supplying buildings, there are three main avenues: supplying new developments west of the town centre and new development sites south of the railway line; supplying existing buildings around the town centre; and connecting the new low temperature heat network with the existing heat network that has served the town centre since 2001.

“The heat network is a more efficient way of supplying heat-dense areas, so there will be efficiency and greenhouse gas emission savings with the town centre working together.”

 ThamesWey Energy is an arm of the ThamesWey Group, in which Woking Borough Council is the sole shareholder.

The council also views the Poole Road infrastructure as significant in the ongoing consultations on its town centre Masterplan; the distinctive orange cylinders illustrate its General Infrastructure section.