Did you know the University has its own power plant on Highfield Campus?
When energy is produced by traditional power plants, the excess heat is often wasted, but the University’s gas-powered plant captures this excess and distributes it around Highfield Campus to heat our water, buildings and swimming pool.
The Combined Heat and Power Plant (CHP) was a £3.5m investment in 2005. Since then, it has saved approximately £500,000 in energy costs each year.
In 2016, the CHP generators ran for 16,000 hours and produced more than 21,000,000 kWh of electricity. By comparison, a typical medium consuming household in the UK will use approximately 3100 to 4,600 kWh each year (figures from Ofgem – Typical Domestic Consumption Values).
The heat produced when the generators are running is used to heat water. In 2016 the plant produced more than 18,000,000 kWh of useful heat.
The University’s Head of Engineering Services, Mark Turner, who helped initiate the project more than a decade ago, said:
This was a significant investment for the University and I’m pleased to see not just the financial saving, but the 3,000 tonnes of carbon we save each year by generating most of the heat and electricity used at the Highfield Campus in this combined and very energy efficient way.
While the University invests in advanced infrastructure such as the CHP, we also rely on your small, everyday actions to make our campuses even more sustainable, such as switching off equipment when not in use.
You can find out more about the University’s CHP by clicking here.
