Utility Week
Summary
Since its customers started drawing heat in February 2020, the Leeds Pipes network has used nearby recycling and energy recovery facilities to covert the city’s waste into heat and hot water, and pump it into thousands of homes.
After breaking ground in 2018, the project’s first phase saw 1,983 homes across a range of multi-storey flats connect and provided with new in-home heating systems including new radiators and controls. The second phase extended the network into Leeds city centre to a number of civic and commercial buildings.
By completion, project partners Vital Energi and Leeds City Council will have created two energy centres feeding a 26.5km system of underground pipes – as well as upgrading in-home heating systems and civic building plant rooms city-wide. Ultimately, it’s hoped that Leeds Pipes will cut the city’s carbon emissions by approximately 16,220 tonnes per year at full build and help Leeds become a carbon-neutral city by 2030.
“While installing the main spine of the network, to maximise efficiency and minimise disruption to the people and places surrounding construction, the first phase of the district heating network was delivered in tandem with an existing transport upgrade project,” he continues. “We worked closely with all the stakeholders delivering the transport upgrade project to ensure the work collectively was successfully coordinated.”
This saw Vital Energi re-schedule its works programme to be “first in trench” at shared building sites – an approach which ensured district heating work completed ahead of other contractors to avoid disruption caused by multiple excavations and street works.
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