Wye Leisure Centre – New Plant room upgrade

Take a VR walk through the completed plant room

Challenge

Wye Leisure, a family run Health and Leisure Club in Herefordshire had an existing water heating system that had grown organically as the business had added more spa’s, buildings and thermal loads. This resulted in four independent hydraulic systems, each operating with virtually no controls monitoring the return temperatures, meaning the condensing boilers were not actually condensing and subsequently had a very high gas consumption for the system they were operating.
The site also had large daily electrical usage required to power the equipment and site services and this was close to exceeding its import capacity from the nearby substation.
Site energy bills were in excess of £142,000 per year.
Helec were invited at first to provide design support and advice was offered with what we could see in front of us.

Solution

Initial advice was to make pipework adjustments and re-design the LTHW system to run all the circuits from a common boiler run with controls to enable lower return temperatures and use a higher Delta T to ensure the maximum efficiency was achieved by the new boilers. A sized Combined Heat & Power unit was also suggested in order to provide on site power support.
The challenge to find space in the existing boiler rooms, make pipework adjustments whilst keeping the site operational and comply with the regional District Network Operator (DNO) to operate a single sized CHP was proving difficult to achieve.

Outcome

After energy assessments using a number of sized CHP options were verified and negotiations with the DNO accepted, a complete new plant room was signed off by the owners to be built in between the two main buildings.
2 x 50 kWe Energimizer EM50HNG CHP units working as “Master & Slave” were in place to deliver the thermal load required 24/7 via a 5,000 ltr thermal store to all pools and hot water services whilst also providing up to 100kWe on-site power.
3 x new high efficiency Remeha boilers would be in position sat on a cascade frame ‘on standby’ ready to support the thermal load should the CHP units thermal capacity be exceeded during high demand periods in winter months.
A Spirotech Spill & Fill system along with a vacuum degassser was fitted to ensure building pressure is automatically maintained for continued operational efficiency.
Due to the local DNO restrictions the CHP units are not allowed to export back to the national grid, therefore an electrical load following system is installed within the CHP control panel which follows the site demand and ensures the CHP only produces what the site requires. (A standard accessory available with all Energimizer CHP units)
Early energy reports seen in 2020 show the EM50HNG CHP units are working almost 24 hours a day with no boiler activity and at this rate total energy savings are forecasted to be between £80,000 – £90,000 per year.