Open House ’17 – Pimlico District Heating

A trip to see some high powered industrial engines was on the agenda as I booked a tour of the Pimlico District Heating Undertaking as part of my recent visit to the London Open House in September.

What jumped out at me was the the engineering efforts involved with providing centralised hot water and heating to over 3000 homes , and a variety of commercial premises and schools to the Pimlico area. The site has two CHP engines (one of which I got to see above!) – producing heat and an electrical output of 3.2MW  along with three very large 8MW boilers , all powered through gas.  The main accumulator tower looming over the site stores 2.5m litres of water as a thermal store – the largest in the UK.

District heating systems are an excellent form of providing affordable energy at very high efficiency – profits made are reinvested back into expanding the capacity and further developments.  The Pimlico project was the first such in the UK , coming at a time when coal fires produced a lot of dangerous air pollution and smog over London.