Largest Ground Source Heat Pump Installation in UK Poultry Sector

- Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015, Farm­ing Life

Renew­able spe­cial­ist TGE Group has been award­ed a £1m con­tract to install a 1,300kW heat pump for a Shrop­shire poul­try farmer to pro­vide heat and cool­ing across four new poul­try units.

On com­ple­tion, the sys­tem will be the largest Ground Source Heat Pump instal­la­tion in the UK poul­try sector.

The project, cur­rent­ly in build, will be man­aged along­side the con­struc­tion of the units to ensure the four, 50,000 bird capac­i­ty sheds are com­plete for late spring. The instal­la­tion of five Geo Qube Ground Source Heat Pumps, man­u­fac­tured specif­i­cal­ly for the poul­try indus­try, will deliv­er reac­tive heat­ing and cool­ing to each building.

With 11,000m of ver­ti­cal bore holes, the heat pump will deliv­er high­ly con­trolled tem­per­a­ture loads of 33⁰C, drop­ping to 20 ⁰C over the crop cycle. Under floor heat­ing will accom­mo­date the base heat­ing load with fan coil units trim­ming the heat­ing to main­tain an accu­rate inter­nal tem­per­a­ture across mul­ti­ple zones. With floor, air and humid­i­ty sen­sors through­out the build­ings, the sys­tem will ensure that birds gain weight in a con­trolled, com­fort­able envi­ron­ment enabling them to reach max­i­mum growth poten­tial increas­ing yield and profitability.

Dur­ing warmer weath­er, the fan coils are capa­ble of cool­ing, help­ing to reduce humid­i­ty and heat lev­els in con­junc­tion with the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tems, whilst re-charg­ing heat into the well field. “Heat pumps have many ben­e­fits over bio­mass boil­ers for new poul­try units,” explains TGE heat direc­tor, Matthew Evans.

“They elim­i­nate the need for reg­u­lar fuel deliv­er­ies on top of the oth­er deliv­ery activ­i­ties involved on site, which can have an impact on plan­ning. Ser­vice and main­te­nance require­ments are high­er with bio­mass, plus heat pumps offer the addi­tion­al ben­e­fits of cool­ing and de-humidification.

“The ini­tial, high­er cap­i­tal cost is soon recouped by the Renew­able Heat Incen­tive (RHI), payable for ever unit of heat gen­er­at­ed, mak­ing pay­back times sim­i­lar to bio­mass. For this project, the pay­back peri­od is just over four years, with £4m in sav­ings and income over the 20 year RHI term. The sys­tem should also be eli­gi­ble for tax relief from the 100% enhanced cap­i­tal allowance.”

The advan­tages of renew­able heat in poul­try units over fos­sil fuels are con­sid­er­able, not only finan­cial, but also increas­ing bird wel­fare, gen­er­at­ing less CO2 and humid­i­ty. The cost of heat­ing new, high­ly insu­lat­ed poul­try units using LPG would be 5.4p/kWh. Heat deliv­ered using heat pump tech­nol­o­gy is 3p/kWh*.

TGE Group was cho­sen for this project as it has a strong track record in deliv­er­ing suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial heat pump projects. Recent work includes two award win­ning heat pump instal­la­tions for a poul­try farm in the West Mid­lands and for a Bell­way Homes’ flag­ship res­i­den­tial development.

TGE Group pro­vides renew­able ener­gy sys­tems for clients in the com­mer­cial, agri­cul­tur­al and pub­lic sec­tors includ­ing award win­ning heat pump instal­la­tions for farms and res­i­den­tial devel­op­ments. The com­pa­ny cov­ers all renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies includ­ing solar, bio­mass and heat pumps to help cus­tomers reduce ener­gy costs. The broad range of prod­ucts also com­pli­ments their exist­ing ener­gy man­age­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion services.