Potential use of the mains water loop for cooling, heat and energy networks

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Session 11 Paper 2, University College London, 16-17 April 2015

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In recent years, the largest single non-railway tunnelling project in London has been Thames Water's new ring main distribution network. The ring main supplies over 1300 million litres of water a day for commercial and domestic purposes. Recently, heat networks and heat pumps capable of delivering heating, cooling or both have been promoted by Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) as a means of decentralising energy provision and reducing emissions. However, heat networks are potentially capital intensive, disruptive to surrounding surface and subsurface infrastructure and as such may be difficult to implement.

This paper investigates the possibility of using the mains water for cooling and preheating of Hot Water Services (HWS) before it is used for the aforementioned purposes. The concept potentially avoids the prohibitive capital expenditure associated with a disruptive installation. The paper describes the London ring main and presents a case study based upon actual data from the ring at the Elephant and Castle and describes potential ways that it could be used.