Funding from the Welsh Government has helped a Ruthin secondary school decarbonise their heating by replacing gas boilers with renewable air source heat pumps.
Ysgol Brynhyfryd is a bilingual co-educational comprehensive school for over 1,000 pupils aged between 11 and 18 years of age in the beautiful valley of Clywd, in North Wales.
The school is maintained by the Denbighshire Education Authority and the renewable solution was the installation of solar photovoltaic panels on the school roof, along with replacing three gas boilers with two commercial air source heat pumps.
“Between the heat pumps and the solar panels, the school is estimated to save an average of £17 to £19 thousand per year, along with 28 tonnes of carbon,” commented Ben Musgrave, Director of JM Renewable Solutions, who installed the systems.
The existing gas boilers were replaced with two 40kw CAHV air source heat pumps from Mitsubishi Electric. The school has underfloor floor heating throughout. Coupled with this, JM Renewables installed a further 75kW of solar panels on the building’s roof, to help with the running costs.
The CAHV heat pumps achieve 70°C water temperatures down to -20°C ambient temperature to deliver continuous heating. Multiple unit cascade control offers capacity from 7.8kW to 640kW to make the system suitable for a wide range of applications.
“The heat pumps meet the design temperature of the school, so it was almost a direct swap from the boilers,” explained Elliot Sullivan, Head of Mechanical Division at JM Renewables. “The efficiency of the heat pumps installed should be around 300 to 400 per cent, so for every one kilowatt of electricity consumed, it will deliver 3 to 4 kilowatts of heat to the building”.
Click here to watch a video about the installation: