I recently visited the Olympic Park in Stratford, London to view their district heating system, which consists of a biomass boiler, four gas boilers and three gas Combined Heat and Power units. The heat produced by the heating system is used to heat approximately 50 buildings across the site, including the flats that were part of the athlete’s village used at the London Olympics in 2012.

This site is ever expanding and we were asked by ENGIE (the provider of the heating system) to complete an Independent Report on Metering Arrangements for the Renewable Heat Incentive to incorporate the addition of 16 buildings to the scheme along with another, 5-10 buildings that will be added in the future.

The scale of the project was evident as I drove around looking at the new connections. There are more than 16km of community energy networks for heating and cooling systems that operate at low temperatures to reduce energy losses across the site (http://www.power-technology.com/projects/olympic-park-energy-centre).

It was very interesting to see a scheme of this size, as the Government looks to incentivise district heating systems like this and I would expect to see more of these popping up across the country.