Woking Borough Council

Woking Borough Council
Civic Offices
Gloucester Square
Woking
Surrey
GU21 1YL
Tel: 01483 743491
Fax: 01483 768746

david.pitcher@ecsc.uk.com
www.woking.gov.uk

As part of its energy efficiency programme the Council implemented its first CHP system in 1992 and the UK’s first small scale CHP/heat fired absorption chiller system in 1994 for which the Council won the CHPA 1996 CHP in Buildings Award, followed by a series of private wire residential CHP systems (the first and still the only systems of their type in the UK). What marks these systems out from any other CHP system in the UK is the direct sale of cogenerated heat and green electricity to local customers at a lower price than for brown energy. As part of the DETR funded Energy Saving Trust ESCO Programme, the Council incorporated the UK’s first EESCO and ESCO, called Thameswey, which is designed to achieve the Council’s energy efficiency and environmental agenda at a much more accelerated rate, utilising primarily private finance, than could be achieved on its own. The Council owns the intellectual property in Thameswey and the Thameswey registered trademark. Thameswey Ltd (TW) is an Energy and Environmental Services Company or EESCO wholly owned by Woking Borough Council which enters into public/private joint ventures to deliver its energy and environmental strategies and targets (primarily energy, tackling fuel poverty, water, green waste and green transport). Thameswey Energy Ltd (TEL) is a public/private joint venture Energy Services Company or ESCO between Thameswey Ltd., and ESCO International A/S owned by Hedeselskabet Miljo og Energi A/S (HME), a Danish environmental and ethical finance company. Phase 1 of the first Thameswey Energy Ltd., ESCO project is currently under construction in Woking Town Centre and is due for completion in January 2001. The CHP system in Woking Town Centre will be developed organically taking a distributed energy approach. The combination of the green technologies connected to the sustainable community energy system (with reverse winter/summer thermal profiles) enables the CHP to be much bigger than conventional CHP achieving 125% to 130% sustainability in electricity (ie., makes the site self sustainable in electricity with a minimum of 25% to 30% available as export off site over public wires to other local customers). This project will be the first sustainable community energy system, operating in a competitive energy market, of its type in the world and has important implications for future sustainability and how to supply local sustainable green energy rather than archaic national energy systems in a declining fossil fuel world. The Woking Park CHP project, comprising the UK’s first fuel cell CHP as well as reciprocating CHP, photovoltaics, thermal storage, absorption cooling and private wire will commence in November 2000 with completion in July 2001. The sponsors of the project are the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), BG plc and the US Department of Defence with the balance of funding being procured by the Council’s Thameswey initiative. This UK’s first combined residential photovoltaic/CHP project will commence in December 2000 with completion in April 2001. The integrated photovoltaics roof and CHP system will have a reverse winter/summer electricity profile with the potential to achieve 100% sustainability in electricity. A second project will incorporate photovoltaic screening on the Civic Offices roof which will be interconnected to a nearby Multi-Storey Car Park via Woking Town Centre CHP private wire system as phase 1 of a proposed solar electric vehicle scheme.

Contact: David Pitcher, Tel: 020 7922 1653