Natural History Museum

Organisation:

Natural History Museum

Size:

Medium

Location:

Natural History Museum, South Kensington, London

Aim:

To retrofit the existing district heating scheme to increase economic savings and reduce carbon emissions and energy security risks

Savings:

2,000 tones CO2 emissions per year

How the Natural History Museum made a difference

Until 2000 the Natural History Museum was part of a 42 MW district heating scheme that also included the adjacent Science Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum and Imperial College.

When Imperial College and the Science Museum withdrew from the heating scheme seven years ago, the fixed and variable cost of the two remaining partners increased substantially; the cost of heat alone went up by 50% from 1.8 to 2.7 p/kWh.

To bring the cost back to its original price, £3.7m funds were raised by the Co-operative Bank for plant to be updated.

The new energy centre was commissioned in December 2006 as a partnership between the Natural History Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum and Vital Energy Ltd, an Energy Services Company (ESCO) providing the technical support.

Working with Danish specialists JHP and COWI, who have expert knowledge in CHP systems, the Natural History Museum was able to incorporate a CHP unit that generated 1.8 MW of electricity. They also integrated a waste-heat boiler to exploit energy in the flue gases and two absorption chillers each providing 705 kW of cooling. Two boilers were retained and fitted with new low-NOx gas fired burners and the existing electrical chillers were de-commissioned.

The system has already ran for over 6000 hours generating more than 10,000MWh of heat and 9,500MWh electricity. It will save over 2,000 tonnes CO2 emissions per year, equivalent to offsetting the carbon dioxide emissions of about 250 Londoners.

The project is an excellent working example of an energy services company (ESCO) upgrading and maintaining a decentralised energy system and demonstrating the ease of retrofitting an existing district heating scheme to enhance its performance.

It’s environmentally friendliness and economically attractiveness has inspired a similar project at Liverpool Museum, as well as resulting in a number of national museums, galleries and libraries visiting the Natural History Museum to help them gain a greater understanding of the potential for trigeneration systems when upgrading their own energy centres.