Minutes:
The Community Meeting was informed that a 25 year contract to improve and extend the current Leicester District Heating Scheme had recently been awarded to COFELY District Energy. This company would be responsible for the design, build and maintenance of the Leicester District Heating Scheme. The system worked on the principal of an engine producing energy and then heat was gathered from the energy to provide heat that was then pumped through a network of pipes to houses on the system.
Representatives from COFELY District energy, based locally at 4 De Montfort Street, attended the meeting and stated that the company, formed in 2009, was owned by GDF Suez, the largest utility company in the world. COFELY District Energy now operated four major district heating schemes across the country, Southampton, Birmingham, Olympics site and now Leicester. Southampton had had an operational scheme for 25 years, Birmingham 5 years and the Olympics site and the Westfield Centre had just gone live.
COFELY had invested some £15 in the Leicester scheme to provide new pipework to connect new and existing systems and to link into the existing system. There were plans to connect Leicester Prison, the Tigers Stadium, and Leicester Royal Infirmary to the existing District Heating Scheme, as well as connecting the City Council buildings and the University. The aim was to have a big central heating system across the City. The whole City System was due to be commissioned by November 2012.
On a local level there were plans to connect the current systems for St. Matthews and St. Marks together, expected to be complete by February 2012, and this would involve various trenches to be dug to install the necessary pipework and lasting until after Christmas. A pilot metering scheme was due to start locally in January whereby 23 individual properties had already been selected to enable an assessment to be made of energy use prior to the new scheme starting, these properties represented a mix of the properties found locally. The results of this metering would enable comparisons to be made with results already gathered from other areas.
Overall the system was a reliable and sustainable system and COFELY were working with the City Council to agree the cost of heating to residents and a local Energy Improvement Manager would be appointed shortly.
At this point members of the public present raised a number of questions and comments, summarised as follows: -
A member of the public stated that adequate information on the changes to the District Heating Scheme had not been made available. In response it was stated that every tenant had been sent a letter from the City Council’s Housing Department and two public meetings had also been held locally, both of which had been well attended.
It was stated that the scheme had not been presented well and clarification was sought as to whether COFELY were going to be operating the existing systems until such time as the new equipment and pipework had been completed in November 2012. In reply it was stated that this was the case and that the new system would provide low cost efficient heating that was also energy efficient, and the pipework would incorporate leak detection system enabling leaks to be pinpointed within 1m. Another advantage of the system was that because the heat was supplied from a network it would be entirely possible to move heat from one part of the City to another should a boiler house fail.
A member of the public questioned how the system could guarantee low costs as suggested earlier in the meeting. In response it was stated that the heat engine was powered by gas and that gas was a market commodity and subject to price fluctuations. All COFELY could do was ensure that maximum efficiency of the system to help ensure that costs can be kept stable.
In conclusion it was suggested and agreed that a separate meeting be held between Ward Councillors, officers and representatives of COFELY to discuss any issues outstanding.
RESOLVED:
that the information be noted.