Older persons housing at Beaufort Glasthule wins award for innovation

Our Housing Department were the winners of the Local Authority Innovation category at the Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Awards, for Beaufort - a unique heat pump district heating system

The Beaufort project was a substantial part of dlr’s Energy Efficiency Retrofit Programme last year. 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.

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