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National Grid and SSE to Trial Using Electricity Transformers to Heat Homes

Electricity substations could soon be transformed into neighbourhood “boilers,” with excess heat from huge transformers channelled to warm homes.

If a recently-launched trial is successful, heat generated by the transmission network transformers, owned by the National Grid, will be connected to district heating networks operated by SSE to offer a low-carbon source of heat to homes nearby.

Currently, hot hair is vented from these substations to cool the giant transformers that help control the electricity running through the high-voltage transmission of Britain’s power grid.

“Electric power transformers generate huge amounts of heat as a byproduct when electricity flows through them. At the moment, this heat is just vented directly into the atmosphere and wasted,” Nathan Sanders, the managing director of SSE Energy Solutions, said.

Capturing this waste heat can provide homes with “a low- or even zero-carbon alternative to fossil-fuel-powered heat sources such as gas boilers,” he said.

District heat networks, especially those channelling waste heat from manufacturing, disused mines and even the London Underground, have been mooted as a means of decarbonising the UK’s heavily polluting heating sector. Unlike other alternatives like electric heat pumps and hydrogen-ready boilers, they can be rolled out across neighbourhoods, without costly installations in each property.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC), the government’s independent climate change advisors, has said that around 18% of the UK’s heat will need to come from heat networks by 2050 for net-zero to be feasible.

National Grid and SSE say a heat network fuelled by electricity transformers would initially have 40% lower carbon emissions than fossil gas systems. Once the UK’s electricity system is net-zero—targeted for 2035—it will provide zero-carbon heat.

The first trials are already underway at National Grid’s specifically designed testing site in Deeside, Wales to determine how heat can be harnessed from substations. Testing will help determine how many homes can feasibly be heated with the waste heat from the electricity grid.

If the trials are successful, the scheme could be rolled out across National Grid’s 1300 substations and the intellectual property shared with smaller regional electricity network owners so they might develop a similar scheme.

Tim O’Reilly, the head of strategy at National Grid, said: “We have 1,300 transmission transformers, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t apply this technology to smaller electricity network transformers, too.”

Lauren Smith
Lauren Smith

Lauren Smith has worked as a journalist and copywriter for most of the last decade, covering technology, energy, and consumer rights, in the US and UK.

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