Talk title: Levenmouth: District Heating in Small Communities Speaker: Ken Brady, Heat Networks Specialist Event: CIBSE Scotland Conference 2026: Heating the Future, 27 May 2026 Video: https://youtu.be/LZ1iFSqieeI [00:00] I've been involved in the heat network sector for probably about 25 years some of you already know me and for those with a long memory I was involved in the old community energy program and we funded a lot of pathfinder projects in scotland and across the uk so that was really the start of the transition it's taken an awful long time and sometimes it's quite painfully slow to see how much progress has been made but we keep fighting the fight so I'm here today to in my capacity as I guess as a consultant I was employed by the danish embassy about a year and a half ago to carry out our study a report this is the named article we're happy to share this and we can send it communities wasn't the original title I preferred district heat news in scottish towns and settlements because small communities tends to fit more with ken's idea I think of the shared loop solution but there are many large towns and settlements where district heating is a good option and the feeling was certainly my feeling was there was a lot of focus in cities and that's [01:04] Great there's a lot of large potential large projects falling through the net and in scotland and there's a lot of us we know a lot of rural fuel poverty which is an endemic curse in scotland and part of that's to do with the nature of the housing stock which is the worst in Western Europe but also it's just to do with the way in which tariffs have risen generally, electricity and gas which is pushing more people into fuel poverty so that's a nice little opening slide of Levenmouth which is the 5K study I'm going to talk about that today and also the reporting methodology which the Danish Energy Agency carried out to look at the study I should mention as well my colleague Antoine is going to talk more about this as well he's also a founding director of Heat Network Scotland he'll tell you more about that later so slide one, here we are Levenmouth nice view of Methyl Docks it's basically made up of three large settlements in Fife Methyl, Leven and Buckhaven population of around 38,000 disturbingly around 65% of the households [02:07] Are either in or very close to fuel poverty struggling to meet their fuel needs or they're in or very close to a high fuel consumption and 30% of households of children with low income and children in low income households also has an elderly demographic and as I said the condition of the housing stock is not great there's a lot of flatty properties badly insulated properties and for this reason they're not really suitable for individual heat pumps another part of the ethos of the report was to actually shine a light on whether individual heat pumps are the universal solution outwith cities and we feel that they aren't they have their place but I think in relation to large towns where they have a lot of flatty properties and the energy efficiency is poor individual heat pumps may not be the best solution and also where the households themselves actually can't afford the capital costs the running costs of the heat pumps so we feel there's a lot more potential to be explored with district heating and again the statistics are relatively disturbing [03:08] But I think you could say that they're applicable to a lot of towns and settlements across Scotland we chose Levenmouth mainly because we were already working with Fife Council and they'd done a lot of good work in revising their zones getting away from a linear heat density analysis looking at more social factors I know that Edinburgh have done that as well it was excellent to see Hilary's presentation earlier to revise the zones to look at more social factors and also to look at extending the zones to capture more anchor loads as well so if we look in more detail at Levenmouth we're actually sort of looking at potential heat sources look at the docks Methyl docks 1, 2 and 3 the one at the top is Methyl Dock number 3 that's basically it's not actually being utilised and that could potentially be used for a large water source heat pump there's also an energy park to the south where there's a large massive 7 megawatt wind turbine it was part of the H100 scheme which I think everyone realises now is not going to be rolled out [04:09] At a massive scale for domestic properties although the fusion production facility is still there we also have the wastewater treatment works to the north just left of the Sainsburys which is again a massive heat source and again potential to capture biomass from that the innovation centre as well which is just to the north of Methyl Dock number 3 has a 750 kilowatt which is still fairly large wind turbine solar PV and again in terms of potential heat sources there are potential to locate smaller scale data centres I think that was mentioned earlier I think very large scale data centres can be problematic because they're not near population centres so we really want to encourage sustainable data centres where we can capture waste heat other important heat sources the waste heat pipe which has got very high flow rate again that flows into the wastewater treatment works and again if you look at many other settlements across Scotland and the UK [05:10] There's potential to capture waste heat from sewage as well as at the site themselves if we move onto the revised zones which I mentioned these are zones which are now actually looking at social factors as well as Lane of Heat density and the instance of fuel poverty in the Levenmouth area also importantly looking at heat corridors where you can actually join up the zones and going forward data from the building assessment reports will actually help to carry on the work of the cosas and the plant factories to refine these zones actually further and looking at non-domestic buildings. [05:47] This actually just shows the social housing layer, which is basically high certainty, where you have the green, the social housing. And obviously, in general terms, it's much easier to connect social housing because you've got a lot of units that you can connect through the provider rather than owner-occupiers or rented, which tend to be the last people to connect. So it's important to capture social housing and also, in terms of the demographic, you know, housing occupants tend to be more vulnerable. [06:17] So it's important to actually not forget about that. And it's a good indicator of viability when you're actually planning the heat network and also looking at positive social outcomes for the tenants. [06:33] The third slide's looking at the revised fuel poverty. Incidents as well. And again, moving away from linear heat density analysis, heat networks that are designed to run properly can actually play an important role in alleviating fuel poverty. So it's not all about anchor loads. And these very large, the purple areas, are actually clusters of many of them. [07:00] We've got electric heating, so they're actually in extreme fuel poverty. And that's why they've been included in the revised zones. Just moving on to the actual, scenarios on the Danish Energy Agency used for the modelling. It was basically scenario mapping, which is looking at life cycle analysis, trying to get the best levelised cost of energy over the piece. It's creating an overview of different possibilities and looking at the local situation. [07:27] Important to point out that in this report, it didn't go into too much detail about, as I've mentioned, things like heat sources, which can actually reduce the heat price. It was actually looking at a benchmarking exercise to see what, in terms of a technical analysis, you could apply across the board. And it is a pre-feasibility study as well. It's important to point that out. So you still have to do the feasibility work. You still have to look at the business case. But ultimately, what you're trying to achieve is the best heat price, looking at the levelised cost of energy and the levelised cost of heat. [07:57] Okay. So looking at the actual model scenarios, scenario one is individual heat pumps. Scenario two is district heating with heat pumps, the gas boiler, and a massive thermal store. Important to point out that's an important part of the equation. Scenario three was district heating, gas heat pumps, and gas boilers. So, as I say, it's important to capture the best levelised cost of heat and energy. [08:22] And if we look at the actual scenario one, sorry, back to scenario one, it was actually modelled at six kilowatt for the heat pump. And that was mainly due to the poor quality of insulation in the buildings. [08:44] And scenarios two and three, we're looking at incorporating large-scale thermal storeys I mentioned, but also large-scale central heat pumps. In this case, probably water source, but it could be air source as well. The data sets were a Scottish heat map, home analytics, and we worked with Scottish powers, Ben, on the grid reinforcement issue. And that's another element that we have to look at and be mindful of, that the grid reinforcement is an issue for individual heat pumps. [09:09] And part of the solution to avoid that is to do large-scale district heating with thermal storage. [09:17] So, where there were gaps, Danish engineers used the Danish technology catalog, which is used to fill the gaps from benchmark data. So it is a pre-feasibility study, so further work needs to be done to refine. The heat demand was modelled at 304 gigawatt hours per year in scenario one and 354 gigawatt hours per year scenarios two and three that was due to a modelling of 16 heat losses through the heat network also looking at electricity prices which as we know are very volatile worth mentioning the district heating assessment tool which was used as free to download from the danish energy agency website designed by rambo and also used energy pro as well to refine the analysis we can do basic analysis using the district assessment tool in scenario two large heat pumps were providing 40 percent of the heat demand and gas was 60 percent this is basically because it was too expensive to run the heat pump at the high electricity prices peak loads so as we mentioned earlier tom [10:19] Was saying about running the heat maximizing the amount of heat pump use this is something you have to do to get the most efficient use of the heat pump but because of current high electricity prices it's difficult to do that at peak load it's expensive you can do it but it's expensive it means the heat price goes up in scenario three which is the last slide before we come on to that the gas chp and fossil fuel and hillary mentioned about edinburgh's elheese strategy including now some fossil fuel it could be biogas at the energy centre but to use a certain element of gas whether it's biogas or natural gas for chp and backup peak load allows the heat pump to run longer which means you get more effective use going into the thermal story also when you're running the gas chp at peak load you can use that electricity to run the heat pump so an element of gas chp whether it's fossil fuel or biogas is important to actually get the cost of heat down as a transition and that's important [11:20] To mention as well as a transitional technology as a way to get the heat network built out and once the heat network's built out then you can look at being flexible with other heat sources whether it be data centres geothermal more waste heat etc curtailed wind and there are opportunities to leave in mouth because there's a massive electrolyzer there anyway to generate hydrogen there's opportunities to get the waste heat from hydrogen so once the network's built out then you can be flexible but in terms of the reporting it was actually showing that the best scenario which is the final slide was the use of gas chp and gas the percentages of that were about 10 gas chp and 15 gas obviously the gas boiler has to be there and it's important that you can use existing gas and gas chp I was talking to roddy earlier and they did precisely doing that using existing gas which is there on the site to actually help to mitigate the cost of the heat pump and again it's important to point out that this is transitional [12:21] And also the gas boiler provides resilience and as I mentioned it could be important could include interestingly about 40 of all danish gas in the network is actually biogas which I think is interesting so there's potential to exploit more biogas I think in the uk and in scotland I've mentioned the electrolyzer it was on site it's been built out somebody asked the question previously I think it was simon from sam why didn't we just use the electricity from the curtailed wind to the heat pump but it's been done now it's a fair call play the electrolyzer is there so we might as well use the hydrogen that's being produced capturing that and using it at the energy center or using the waste heat from hydrogen production which is still going ahead so essentially scenario three offers the best levelized cost of heat and the best customer outcomes in terms of affordable warmth and I think that this is something which going forward we need to look at as a transition we know that one of the big challenges is the high cost of electricity for the heat pumps we want to use heat pumps we want to maximize the use but I think as a transition we need to be flexible and [13:25] Look at using gas not only where it's there but maybe using biogas chp to actually bolster the case.