Installation of heat pumps to recover waste-heat from the City Hall servers and reuse it for space heating and domestic hot water needs
The Danish municipality, Hedensted previously emitted all excess heat produced via ventilators. Cronborg, a heat pumps company, convinced the municipality that green heat pump technology not only can save the city on its annual heating bill but also can significantly relieve the environment of green-house-gas emissions.
The challenge
Besides economic considerations, municipalities are increasingly also paying attention to responsible purchasing and CO2 emissions in public procurement. Green and energy efficient solutions are becoming increasingly interesting to them.
The measure
The Hedensted municipality (Denmark) was previously releasing heat generated by cooling the city hall servers and was aware that this emission of excess heat was a wasted resource. Thus when the company Cronborg demonstrated to the municipality the advantages of RECOOL, a heat pump system to collect and reuse excess heat for space heating and domestic hot water, it decided to go for in the option of procurement of eco-innovation to optimise energy efficiency in buildings.
The RECOOL heat pump system was bought and installed with the investment of DKK 400,000 (Euro 53,600 approx.). The investment accounted for a pay back period of approximately 5.5 years. With annual operational costs of DKK 32,000 (Euro 4,300 approx.) the system saves the municipality approximately DKK 105,000 (Euro 14,000 approximately) each year on heating. The annual operating profit thus generated is approximately DKK 73,000 (Euro 9,800 approx.).
This demand side measure saves the municipality approximately 10,000 litres of oil a year corresponding to annual CO2 savings of 28 tonnes.
Lessons learnt
The public procurers need to have a life-cycle cost perspective in procurement decisions in order to understand the full advantages of the solutions such as green heat pumps where the initial investments maybe higher but are overall lower in terms of energy savings and environmental advantages.
Further deployment
Cronborg can secure a better advantage as regards public sector demand for its technology if the existing tendering systems allow for functional and performance based procurement specifications, , and the procurer is actually seeking an eco-innovative solution. Cronborg’s heat pumps are gaining a share of the market within Denmark’s municipalities and so far 10 municipalities, including public swimming pools and several education institutes, have purchased them qualifying this policy for a maturity level of 9 on GML scale.
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