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Latest Eco News
"Danfoss acquires Eco Heat Pumps Limited, 9th April 2008"
Danfoss continues to invest in the promising European heat pump market. Danfoss has entered into an agreement to take over the majority of shares in Eco Heat Pumps, Sheffield, England, which markets heat pumps in the British market. The company is among the leading players in Great Britain within its area and in a few years has grown to 30 employees.
"All Energy, Exhibition & Conference Centre Aberdeen 21st-22nd May 2008"
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at All-Energy is the UK's largest renewable energy event. Now's the time to register free of charge to attend the exhibition, conference and Giant Networking Evening.
"Nemex, NEC Birmingham 20th-22nd May 2008"
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at The Nemex, NEC Birmingham 20th-22nd May 2008. NEMEX is the UK’s longest running and largest exhibition and networking event for the energy and renewables industries.
"Homebuilding & Renovating Show, SECC Glasgow, 17th-18th May 2008"
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at The Homebuilding & Renovating Show, SECC Glasgow, 17th-18th May 2008.
"The National Homebuilding & Renovating Show, NEC Birmingham 10th-13th April 2008"
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at The National Homebuilding & Renovating Show, NEC Birmingham 10th-13th April 2008. Whether you are building your home from scratch, building a major extension, remodelling your home or just keen to integrate the latest technology, The National Homebuilding & Renovating Show is the perfect start your dream home.
"An audience with Gordon Brown on 1st April 2008"
Air Source Heat Pumps are being tipped as the future for heating and hot water provision.
"We Have Moved - Eco Heat Pumps Expansion & Relocation 1st March 2008"
Due to significant growth over the last two years Eco Heat Pumps have Expanded and relocated within Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
"Ecobuild, Earls Court London 26th-28th February 2008"
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at Ecobuild, Earls Court London 26th-28th February 2008. Whatever your interest in sustainable design, construction and the built environment, a visit to Ecobuild will give you a fresh perspective.
"Please force us to go green 15th December 2007"
An article written by Matthew Parris that was featured in The Times newspaper on the 15th December 2007. I can't believe I'm saying this, but we need to learn from Tony Benn about how the State can change people's habits.
"Eco Heat Pumps Expands the team with a new location in Scotland 1st September 2007"
Eco Heat Pumps has reinforced its position as a leading player in the Scottish market for renewable energy with the appointment of Andy Smith as Area Manager Scotland.
"Thanks to heat of the Earth, I'm warm 7th April 2007"
An article written by Matthew Parris that was featured in The Times newspaper on the 7th April 2007. Matthew discusses the installation of a heat pump system at his Derbyshire Peak District home.
Danfoss acquires Eco Heat Pumps Limited, 9th April 2008
Danfoss continues to invest in the promising European Heat Pump market. Danfoss has entered into an agreement to take over the majority of shares in Eco Heat Pumps, Sheffield, England, which markets heat pumps in the British market. The company is among the leading players in Great Britain within its area and in a few years has grown to 30 employees. Eco Heat Pumps is Danfoss's sixth acquisition within heat pumps in less than three years. The goal is to be among Europe's leading players within the hydronic segment, i.e. Heat Pumps that supply hot water for households and central heating systems. An ordinary household is able to save 50-70 percent of the heating bill by replacing traditional oil or gas burners with for example a heat pump. The European consumers are becoming seriously aware of this due to the increased focus on CO2 and energy savings. "The potential is enormous, but competition is also tough. We expect an annual market growth in Europe of approx. 30 percent in the years to come. It is essential to establish ourselves in the key markets, while the market is still emerging, and this is the rationale behind the agreement with Eco Heat Pumps", says Nis Storgaard.
Sales organisation for Danfoss in Great Britain Danfoss already delivers heat pumps to Eco Heat Pumps, which in the future will be positioned as Danfoss Heat Pump's sales organization in Great Britain. "The British Heat Pump market is still new and relatively small, but we expect that also here we will experience substantial growth in demands in the coming years. The agreement with Eco Heat Pumps helps us strengthen our opportunity to take a leading position and get our share of future market growth," says Division President Nis Storgaard, Danfoss Heating Division. Eco Heat Pumps previous owner Phil Moore will continue as Managing Director of the company. "We are pleased that Danfoss wanted to take ownership of our business. We have expanded rapidly during the last years, and with Danfoss behind us, we are ready to accelerate even further", says Phil Moore. Click here for more information about Danfoss.
All Energy, Exhibition & Conference Centre Aberdeen 21st-22nd May 2008
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at All-Energy is the UK's largest renewable energy event. Now's the time to register free of charge to attend the exhibition, conference and Giant Networking Evening.
All-Energy is the UK's largest renewable energy event. Now's the time to register free of charge to attend the exhibition, conference and Giant Networking Evening. Yes, All-Energy really is free to attend for all with a business/professional interest in renewable energy! Just click here for quick and easy online registration.
Nemex (National Energy Management Exhibition), NEC Birmingham 20th-22nd May 2008
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at The Nemex, NEC Birmingham 20th-22nd May 2008. NEMEX is the UK’s longest running and largest exhibition and networking event for the energy and renewables industries.
Delivering all aspects of energy management and efficiency and renewable solutions and bringing together key suppliers and buyers at the UK’s largest national forum for sustainable business. NEMEX is the event for all purchasers and specifiers of energy efficiency products, renewable technologies, metering controls, wind power and building management systems. Click
here to register for The Nemex Show.
Homebuilding & Renovating Show, SECC Glasgow, 17th-18th May 2008
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at Homebuilding & Renovating Show, SECC Glasgow, 17th-18th May 2008. The Scottish Homebuilding & Renovating Show is the ideal place to get in touch with Scotland self-build experts, and the best way to source all the products, services and advice you need to build your dream home. Whether you are at the beginning of your project, or well underway, make sure you visit Scotland's dedicated Homebuilding & Renovating Show.
There are plenty of reasons to visit the show. Free Daily Seminars - Learn all about homebuilding and renovated by attend free daily seminars. Presented in 12 daily sessions for your convenience. Free Daily Masterclasses and the chance to have a 1-1 with key experts from the industry with over 140 Exhibitors. Click here to register for The Home Building Show.
The National Homebuilding & Renovating Show, NEC Birmingham 10th-13th April 2008
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at The National Homebuilding & Renovating Show, NEC Birmingham 10th-13th April 2008. Whether you are building your home from scratch, building a major extension, remodelling your home or just keen to integrate the latest technology, The National Homebuilding & Renovating Show will provide you with the right products, services, advice and inspiration to transform your property into your dream home.
There are plenty of reasons to visit the show. Free Daily Seminars - Learn all about homebuilding and renovated by attend free daily seminars. Presented in 12 daily sessions for your convenience. Free Daily Masterclasses - Take advantage of the chance to have a 1-1 with key experts from the industry. Over 500 Exhibitors - Gain expert advice from national and regional suppliers and view all the best products, innovations and the latest services. The Smart Home Show - Discover a world of technology for your home. The Eco Homes Show - Learn all about creating an eco-friendly and energy saving home. Restoration Pavilion - From restoration to decoration, the Restoration Pavilion provides a great source of inspiration for your period home. ‘Spotlight’ Feature Areas - New for 2008, this year we are launching new 'Spotlight' feature areas where you can get advice and information from independent experts on a one-to-one basis. Make sure you take the opportunity to pick up useful tips and find the right questions to ask, before you check out the products and services that you are interested in. Click here to register for The Home Building Show.
An audience with Gordon Brown on 1st April 2008
A recent report from Ernst and Young comissioned by the DTI reveals that Air Source Heat Pumps are the only renewable heat option for the UK's high density housing. The renewable heat debate ruled out biomass and GSHP and solar panels. Recent monitoring of the Thermia AIr source heat pumps in the UK showed COP's in excess 4:1 . This superb result allows for the provision of DHW and all circulating pumps. With the governments quest for renewable heat providers, ECO Heat Pumps demostrate the potential for ASHP at Parliament in an audience with Gordon Brown on 1st April 2008.
We Have Moved - Eco Heat Pumps Expansion & Relocation 1st March 2008
Due to significant growth over the last four years, Eco Heat Pumps have expanded and relocated within Sheffield, South Yorkshire. As the leading provider of Air Source & Ground Source Heat Pump installations, Eco Heat Pumps has expanded by trebling turnover and increasing its employees from 4 to 22 during the last four years. We will be increasing our client services and installation teams to ensure that all Eco Heat Pump customers receive the highest standards and efficiency at all times. In physical terms we are relocating within Sheffield to modern purpose built premises, doubling our operating space. New workshops, storage and office facilities also allow for continued expansion over the coming years. We would like to thank all of our customers who have helped us to become the market leader within the Heat Pump sector.
Ecobuild, Earls Court London 26th-28th Feb 2008
Eco Heat Pumps will be exhibiting at Ecobuild, Earls Court London 26th-28th Feb 2008. Whatever your interest in sustainable design, construction and the built environment, a visit to Ecobuild will give you a fresh perspective.
Want to learn? Over 100 individual conference and seminar sessions are yours, most of which are free. Want to find new products? Take your pick from 500+ exhibitors. Looking for inspiration? Find it in one of the thought-provoking new attractions. Want to voice an opinion? The floor is yours in The Arena. Need a shortcut to the big issues? Take a tour around the hottest issues – zero carbon, water management, renewables, natural materials, urban design, offsite. Click here to register for Ecobuild - 3 days, 500 exhibitors, 100 information sessions, 500 expert speakers, 20,000 visitors – see things differently.
Please force us to go green
An article by Matthew Parris featured in The Times on December 15th, 2007
Here in the Derbyshire Peak District as I write it's about two degrees below freezing. A thick rind of frost covers the field above the house, where grass is sharp as ice and the earth an iron-hard crust. No birds sing. All is still, apparently lifeless.
But pick up a trenching spade. Four feet down there's another, warmer world. The soil is about 6C, not very different winter or summer, day or night: temperatures down there rise and dip only gently with the weather and the seasons.
My field — and our whole island — is a giant storage heater. And it's heating the house. Warm water courses through the radiators, and the bath and showers are piping hot. We have no gas here, no oil-fired boiler. The source of all this heat is the field outside.
Early this year I described my plans for ground-source energy. Radiators were being put in, floors were up. Diggers were churning the field and there were trenches, heaps of earth and rocks everywhere. Four hundred metres of thick black PVC pipe lay coiled by the drive like a monstrous snake, waiting for the trenches to house it, and 200 tonnes of sand had arrived to sheath the piping.
I explained — and will not repeat at length — the principle of ground-source heating, in which energy is harvested from tens of thousands of tonnes of earth, and transferred by a heat pump (the same technology as a refrigerator) into a few hundred litres of water. The latter is greatly warmed, the former very slightly cooled. Energy is not created, but moved and concentrated. That is the theory.
Well, the news is that it works. The system is simple to operate, reliable, responsive, quiet and efficient, the house is warm as toast, and the electricity bill (I used to have storage heaters) is plummeting. But the pump cost about £7,000 and the groundworks cost as much again. The planning bureaucracy was irksome and the mess horrendous. It was not strictly an economic decision. I did it out of interest, and because it's good to be a pioneer.
Yet the project has come quite close to making economic sense. Next (depending on the planners) I hope to invest in solar and wind energy. When both houses on our property are heated by ground source, we should have home-generated electricity left over to sell back into the national grid. The economics overall will then depend on the price that the electricity utility offers customers like me for our power.
In short, the practical and business case for my eco-energy project, and likewise for hundreds of thousands of citizens' green household dreams, depends at a number of key stages upon government.
Overall:
- Are there subsidies?
- Is the planning system for or against us?
- Do our national tariff structures for energy encourage or discourage private household investment?
Based on my experience so far, my answers are: 1) small and rather confusing subsidies do exist; 2) the planning system is against us; and 3) the price incentive for householders contemplating feeding the national grid is pitifully inadequate: a fraction of what is offered, say, to the swelling ranks of private generators in Germany.
Over to you, Gordon Brown, Hilary Benn and your fellow ministers. Government in Britain needs to learn to sing a new song. Interviewed from the Bali climate talks on the Today programme yesterday, Mr Benn was singing the old song.
It isn't governments that buy airline tickets, said the Environment Secretary: people do. He was being challenged by his interviewer, John Humphrys, to explain why the Government is allowing Heathrow (and, with it, air travel) to expand massively at a time when we are trying to curb global emissions. Mr Benn's implied argument was that government sets the carbon cap: if we insist on flying then that is our choice, but we may have to do a lot less of something else to pay for it.
But would he say what it was we might “choose” to do a lot less of? Getting an answer from him was like trying to get blood from a stone. Finally the minister was driven to whimpering about low-energy light bulbs. Mr Benn seemed doggedly reluctant to agree (as Mr Humphrys kept pressing him to) that in any important way we British might have to learn to live differently.
British ministers talk about climate change in the way many Christians talk about their faith. If they believed only half of what they profess, then the knowledge would surely have galvanised them, shaken them rigid; they would be grabbing us by our lapels and begging us, imploring us, commanding us, to repent.
My climate-change faith is flimsier. I don't believe in half the certainties of “the science” to which ministers subscribe — who knows how much of this climate change may be cyclical, how much irreversible, and how much is caused by us? Have scientists really (I doubt it) got the numbers, the levers, the timings right? — yet I am sure our planet is running out of fossil fuels and that there is a good chance that burning them is contributing to climate change. We don't need better arguments than these to conclude that we should find alternative sources of energy and new ways of saving energy; and, having found them, to make it worth people's while to switch.
I never thought I would write this, but Hilary should listen to his infuriating old dad, Tony. Tony Benn believes in the power — and the duty — of the State to change the way citizens live. On this issue, and from the other end of the ideological spectrum, I do too.
So dazzled by the Emerald City of market economics and personal choice have both the Centre Left and the Centre Right become that they seem to have forgotten that, even though the market may be as much a force of nature as the wind, a sailing ship still needs a navigator at the helm. Government is the navigator, and there are rocks ahead. Government must bribe or bully us into making different choices.
Planning disincentives should be cut and financial incentives increased. Only government can do this. Whopping new taxation is needed to encourage good husbandry in energy. Only government can do this. In particular, the case for road pricing is now overwhelming. Only government can do this. Yet everything I know about Gordon Brown tells me he will shortly shy at the road-pricing fence; and everything I know about the Tories tells me that they're unlikely to whip him on.
Which is a shame, because I believe the British people are ready to be shown a lead, ready to alter our own behaviour so long as others are made to pull their weight too. What we are not disposed to do is make gloriously quixotic personal sacrifices all on our own. If the Government could find the guts to require change, and apply those requirements to all of us, millions of my fellow citizens would react not with anger but relief. Ask your father, Hilary: the people need instruction.
Eco Heat Pumps Expands the team with a new location in Scotland
Eco Heat Pumps has reinforced its position as a leading player in the Scottish market for renewable energy with the appointment of Andy Smith as Area Manager Scotland.
Andy Smith brings a background of specialist experience to his new role. Previous appointments have included periods with boiler manufacturer Fifas Ltd and Scottish and Southern Energy, working on both gas and electric heating systems.
Based in Perth, he will be responsible for liaison with Eco customers in Scotland, from domestic end users to professional specifiers including consulting engineers.
With demand for "green" energy sources growing fast, there's an acknowledged lack of specialist knowledge and expertise. Andy Smith's role will be to fill that gap with information and technical advice to aid all types of domestic and commercial application.
Experienced team
Eco Heat Pumps already has an experienced installation team in Scotland led by Alan Donald of IMS Heating Solutions. Alan has been involved with heat pump technology since 1997, when he was selected to be part of a Scottish Hydro Electric team installing one of the first closed loop ground source heat pumps, specially imported from Sweden.
Since then, working with Eco Heat Pumps' technical team in Sheffield, he has been involved in over 200 heat pump installations in Scotland. Projects include the geo-thermal system designed to serve the refurbished Hillcrest apartments in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket.
A water-glycol mixture is pumped through pipework in the boreholes drawing naturally occurring heat into the system from deep below the ground surface. The heated water enters the flow side of an Eco Robust Heat Pump located in the plant room. Here the action of compressor and condenser brings the water temperature up to the levels required by the apartment building’s underfloor heating and hot water systems.
The system at the Grassmarket development is weather compensated with external and flow temperature sensors modulating operation of the heat pump. In this way the target temperature of 55oC for the supply to the 1000 litre hot water store, which serves the individual apartments, can be maintained year round. Eco technology makes a perfect partner for all types of warm water underfloor heating – in this case used in association with wooden suspended floors.
The Eco Heat Pump System is designed to achieve a Seasonal Performance Factor or SPF - an average COP over the course of the year - of 3.5:1 bringing the new building well within the carbon emission regulations.
Thanks to heat of the Earth, I'm warm
An article by Matthew Parris featured in The Times on April 7th, 2007
The llamas are horrified. Their field behind our house in the Derbyshire Peak District looks like a scene from the Great War. Two 100m trenches, almost as deep as a man is tall, stretch away up the hill. Everywhere are mountains of earth, and car-sized rocks. 200 tonnes of sand arriving in lorries. A digger is working, finishing the second trench, and loaders are shunting sand back and forth.
I feel seasick, nursing my abused cheque book, comforted only by the knowledge that in a week's time the field will be returned to its former aspect - save for two long strips of bare earth where trenching has been filled in again. I can reseed them.
But deep beneath the surface will lie an invisible skein of black plastic piping, encased (against sharp rocks) in a core of sand. And the piping will converge on two valves beneath a manhole, from which will run two big conduits, leading through the wall of our holiday cottage into the utility room. Here will sit, humming softly, a machine about the size of a fridge-freezer. One conduit will bring "brine" (water laced with antifreeze) from beneath the field where it has been gently warmed by the soil, into the machine. The other will carry away the brine, refrigerated by the machine, to rewarm beneath the field. The machine will provide us with copious hot water for central heating and domestic use.
This is the first and biggest step in the plan I set out on this page last year, to make our property in Derbyshire self-sufficient, using "green" energy. Few householders are as lucky: I have fields, woods, my own water supply, sewage system and reed-beds. But I hope to learn - and pass on - lessons from this project. At its core is something called "ground-source energy": a means of home-heating that other European countries have been readier to adopt than us. But if the experience of the Sheffield company supplying my heat pump is typical, Britain is fast waking up to the idea.
In Switzerland every third new building is equipped with a heat pump. In Sweden seven out of ten new builds rely on this technology. In Germany, too, it is catching on. Because the installation makes a huge mess inside and around a house, the technology is most obviously applicable to new construction. My stone buildings are centuries old; but I have decided to brave the cost and inconvenience. If the system works in the large holiday cottage beside our house, we will adopt it throughout.
Perhaps because the concept of heat pumps stumps and mystifies people, the invention has never attracted the band of true believers that (say) wind turbines, or "hot rocks" (geothermal) energy, or even nuclear fusion or fission, have. The whole idea seems counter-intuitive. How can a simple compressor pump suck heat out of seemingly nowhere? How can you turn something cold into something warmer without putting energy in?
But it works; and on inspection the mystery dissolves. Did you know that the standard kitchen fridge is a heat pump in reverse? Your fridge cools its interior and dumps the heat outside: into your kitchen through the grill behind the back. My kind of heat pump will dump the cool and keep the heat. Indulge me - no physicist - in 500 words of explanation, for this idea may prove a big component of Europe's future energy philosophy.
Unlike combustion, heat pumps do not create heat: they move it from one place to another. "Fair enough," you say, "but how come the place you heat gets hotter than the place you got the heat from? Isn't this something for nothing?"
No. Put a hot teaspoon into a bucket of cold water. The spoon will be cooled a lot, the water warmed just a little. Overall, you have not gained or lost heat by this move: you have simply transferred it, spreading out the heat from a small mass of hot material, into a large, cooler mass that it will slightly warm. Well, how about doing this in reverse and ending up with a hot teaspoon and a slightly cooler bucket?
This is essentially what a ground-source heat pump does: it collects a lot of low-level heat from one place and "concentrates" it into a little high-level heat in another. It slightly refrigerates a waste of stuff that doesn't matter - the soil around the house - and greatly heats a little of something that does - your hot water tank and central-heating system.
How? Consider two everyday examples. When you use a bicycle pump the nozzle heats up. And after a long blast with an aerosol spray, the nozzle gets cold. This is because when you compress a gas (or condense it into a liquid) it gets hot; and when you evaporate a liquid into a gas (or decompress the gas) it gets cold. So to pump heat from one place to another, we make a closed loop and pump gas around it, compressing and liquefying where we want heat delivered, then decompressing and evaporating where we want it to capture its next load of heat. This does use energy, but not much: the electricity to drive the compressor/circulator pump.
A ground-source heat pump gathers heat into a hot water tank for your house - and captures it from a much larger body of water ("brine") which is being pumped round a huge circulatory system running in pipes hundreds of metres long, beneath your land. Here the refrigerated fluid warms up again, to be reused, bringing the heat back to the heat pump and its gas-filled loop. The whole system will deliver about four times as much energy (in the form of heat) as it consumes (in the form of the electricity).
The ultimate energy source is sunshine - but a metre or so down, soil temperatures do not fluctuate wildly with sunrise, sunset and the seasons, but level out, varying gently around 10C. This unlimited supply of low-level heat at a fairly steady temperature is ideal for the delicately balanced gas-circulation system of the machine.
Other heat-pump systems use the air, not the soil, for heat collection. Or you can take it from rivers or wells. And for ground-source you can go vertically down, putting pipes into bore holes if you are short of space. But I have chosen to use my field.
I wondered last year whether the Peak District National Park (our local planning authority) would prove a stumbling block. Quite the reverse. It seemed enthusiastic about green-energy schemes and a young officer came to talk to me about mine. He was positive. Before Christmas I went to see a new ground-source scheme in successful operation at a farm near Tideswell, and since then the owner has received planning permission for a small wind turbine too. This is on my list also, but not yet.
My only problem with bureaucracy has been that the earthworks for ground-source require planning permission. "If permission is finally refused," the lady in the office warned me, "you may be required to put everything back to how it was before."
"I'm doing that anyway," I said: "I'm digging a trench then filling it in again." So I went ahead regardless.
David Cameron's new and greener Opposition should look again at planning laws. Perhaps for a range of defined green energy applications there should be a presumption in favour of permission, shifting the onus on to the planning authority to demonstrate exceptional reasons why it should be refused.
That aside, the National Park authority seems encouraging and interested. People around me share the curiosity, and a stream of visitors has come to take a look. Coincidentally, in nearby Youlgreave a group has formed to develop ways of making the whole village more energy self-sufficient. A tide is turning in public attitudes and public interest.
Oh dear. We're going to have to move the llamas. Their horror has turned to fascination, and there could be a horrible accident with a digger. But I'll keep you posted on progress - and, in time, with how the economics work out. What fun, to be a pioneer.
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