Beaufort Housing Retrofit:  dlr & SSE Airtricity Energy Services Celebrate SEAI Award

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and SSE Airtricity Energy Services are delighted to announce their award in the SEAI 2023 Residential Energy Upgrades category. The prestigious award recognises their outstanding collaboration in upgrading the Beaufort Housing in Glasthule, comprising of 58 residential units, a day care centre, and kitchens. The upgrades have resulted in an energy reduction of up to 80% per unit, per year.

Councillor Denis O’Callaghan, Cathaoirleach, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council said:

The Beaufort Housing retrofit has had a significant positive impact on the community, vulnerable residents, and the advancement of energy efficiency technology. We are proud to have collaborated with SSE Airtricity Energy Services on this groundbreaking project".

The Beaufort project was a substantial part of dlr’s Energy Efficiency Retrofit Programme last year. Working with SSE Airtricity, we undertook a complete retrofit of the 58 designated older persons apartments in Beaufort with the completed works including external insulation, new doors and windows, solar panels, heating system upgrades and attic insulation.

The significant innovation in this project was installation of an intricate, cascading district heating system that ensures all 58 apartments are heated by just eight 14kW Ecodan heat pumps. With the heat pumps installed in two parallel banks of four, greater efficiency is achieved in low heat demand times as each series of heat pumps can be modulated down to have just one heat pump operating with a minimum output of 3kW per bank and a total minimum load output of 6kW for the entire development.

As part of the wider energy retrofitting works in the development, the system contributed to:

• An increase in the average BER ratings for the apartments from an E1, to an A3 rating
• a reduction in calculated energy usage of approximately 80% on the pre-energy usage in the development
• annual energy savings achieved per apartment of 7,998 Kwh with a total saving of 463,884 Kwh per year.