Energy supply

DEPDU supports London boroughs and other private and public sector partners to develop decentralised energy projects, some of which include heat networks. It gives technical, financial and commercial advisory help for larger energy projects. Most of these are projects get their heat either when energy is generated from combined heat and power (CHP) energy generation, or from sources of waste heat that are not being used. Waste heat includes heat from the London Underground, data centres and industrial processes.

DEPDU was set up with €3.3m funding, 90 percent of which was from the European Investment Bank’s ELENA fund, and will offer specialist advice until March 2016. We have already supported London boroughs and partners to take 13 decentralised projects to market. These are worth a total investment of over £100 million. We’re also supporting another 8 projects, with a total investment potential of over £150 million.

To help heat networks interconnect and operate efficiently and effectively, we have also produced guidance. The London Heat Network Manual gives technical and other advice on developing heat networks for developers, network designers and energy producers.

We’re working with Islington Council and our project partners to support cities in the UK and across Europe with building more heat networks as part of the European-funded CELSIUS project. Islington Council, for example, is using waste heat from the London Underground to heat homes on their Bunhill heat network. For more information and to see an interactive video explaining the project visit the CELSIUS Cities website.

We’re working with London boroughs to identify where heat is used in the city and where market-competitive heat networks could be located. Areas with many buildings close to each other that need a lot of heat are often best suited for heat networks. We’ve supported all the London boroughs to develop heat maps and helped to create 12 energy masterplans for different areas of the city. We’ve published all these, and other energy supply and demand information, on the London Heat Map to help developers, London boroughs and others to create and locate new heat networks.

As part of our approach to decarbonising London’s heat supply, it is important to understand how much of our existing building stock could be connected to new and/or existing heat networks, where those are and what the technical challenges and financial costs would be for doing so. This will feed in to our energy masterplanning work and inform our strategic approach to decarbonising London’s buildings through a combination of reducing energy demand and decarbonising energy supply. The GLA received funding from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) to undertake a research project called ‘Accelerating the Transition to 4th Generation District Heating Systems’ to look at this and a link can be found to the final reports at the bottom of the page under the ‘Energy Supply Studies’.

We’ve become the first authority in the country to go operational with a new type of electricity licence. Licence Lite lets smaller, local electricity suppliers sell power to the market without the significant licensing requirements and costs that larger suppliers need to meet.

Having the new licence will mean we can buy excess electricity generated by London boroughs, public bodies and others and sell it to consumers, offering better prices to the generators. To start off with we’re looking to sell it to Transport for London and may expand this to others like the Metropolitan Police, the NHS and the private sector.

We successfully concluded our contract negotiations with the generators, TfL as the consumer and nPower as the Third Party Licence Supplier. On 20 December 2017 Ofgem formally announced that our application for Electricity Supply Licence Lite was successful and that the licence was granted. The project started operation on 1 January 2018.

We publish information and data on energy supply in London to help developers, London boroughs and businesses supply more local energy:

Studies

Communal Heating Consumer Survey Report - this survey was commissioned in 2017 to establish the views of consumers in London connected to communal and district heating networks that provide their space heating and hot water requirements. The survey report was published in October 2018. A total of 384 surveys were carried out across 44 sites. The results and conclusions were similar to those of other reports and the BEIS Heat Network Consumer Survey (2017): the majority of heat customers served by communal and district heating networks were satisfied with their heating arrangements.‎

The London Heat Network Manual - this study provides practical guidance to local authorities, energy services companies, developers and planners on the development and delivery of heat networks in London. It includes chapters on designs, standards, construction, management and innovation of district heating. A revised and updated version of this manual will be completed by the end of 2018

The Decentralised Energy Capacity Study- this study has data and analysis of the potential for renewable energy and heat networks in London.

Secondary Heat Study – London’s Zero Carbon Energy Resource - this report looks into waste heat sources that could supply local energy to heat networks in the future.

Powering Ahead: Delivering low carbon energy for London - this report explains the commercial, regulation and policy requirements needed to develop of heat and power networks in London.

Smart Energy - Intelligent Management of London's Energy Supply - this study looks at how new ‘smart’ technologies can help to cut the amount of peak energy London uses.

Energy Masterplans – this reports identify decentralised energy opportunities in some of the London Boroughs and are available to download on our London Heat Map website.

Connecting existing buildings to district heating networks – this report looks at the technical challenges and financial costs of retrofitting existing buildings’ heating systems so that they can be connected to district heating networks, as well as some of the challenges of maintaining thermal comfort in buildings whilst reducing the supply temperature of heat networks. Read the summary report and the technical report.