BNP Paribas celebrates its commitment to invest in Renewable Energy

FotoDocument has been commissioned by BNP Paribas to create a photo essay on a range of clean energy sources from the sun, wind, water and earth to inspire the bank's staff and clients and to reaffirm BNP Paribas' commitment to invest €15 billion in renewable energy by 2020.

The exhibition, which launches at BNP Paribas' office in central London in January 2018, features an installation of heat pump technology designed and installed by ICAX at Owen Park Square in Bristol.

ICAX Energy Centre Skid

The photograph on the right, which was taken by Luca Sage in July 2017, shows the ICAX Energy Centre behind the child in full swing.

The area in and around Owen Square Park attracts attention from tagging. ICAX therefore commissioned local artist, Zoe Power, to create a design for the Energy Centre which represents some of the ideas of the project, and reflects themes from the local community. This has been respected, and the work stands as a proud testament to the project and local creative talent.

Owen Square Community Energy Project

Electricity generated by roof mounted solar panels drives a heat pump which captures heat from the summer air and stores it in a themalbank in the ground, until needed for heating in winter.

ICAX uses a heat pump to recycle heat back to the building in winter – without burning fossil fuels – and doubles the Coefficient of Performance of the heat pump by starting from a warm ThermalBank.

The Owen Square Community Energy Scheme demonstrates the decarbonisation of heating and the electrification of heat in a district energy scheme that side steps the need for high-temperature heavily-insulated pipework.

The ICAX Energy Centre:

  • shifts electric consumption from times of peak winter demand to times of surplus summer solar generation
  • exploits Borehole Thermal Energy Storage to store heat from summer to winter
  • transfers heat into buildings in winter without using combustion – without emitting any pollution or gases on site
  • packages existing commercially ready technologies in a novel use combination
  • and has the potential to scale up rapidly.

Decarbonising Heat

The Owen Square project demonstrates decarbonisation of heating by employing an innovative solar district heating network with seasonal thermal storage in the heart of a suburban neighbourhood. The project combines pioneering interseasonal heat storage technology from ICAX, energy-vector research from the University of Bath, CEPRO's experience in energy metering, monitoring, engagement and billing at the local community level and full life cycle assessment by energy consultancy, Eunomia. The team has worked closely with Easton Community Centre and Easton Energy Group at the Owen Square site in Bristol.

The problem answered in this DECC funded project is how to decarbonise heat – currently 80% of UK buildings are heated by gas. One approach is to use CHP (combined heat and power), but when fueled by gas the carbon reduction potential is limited to around 30% and the long term supply issues remain unsolved. When fueled with biomass then CHP is associated with supply chain complexity, high operational costs and environmental impact from transport and smoke emissions.

 

 

 

 

See Low Carbon Heating       See Low Carbon Cooling    See Ground Source Energy