HeatingSave wins Environmental Business of the Year award

Huntingdonshire District Council and the Hunts Post wanted to recognise those community groups and individuals who are getting together and making a real change in their community by reducing their environmental footprint. To recognise people and businesses in the local community they held an award ceremony and dinner in the Burgess Hall, St Ives, Cambridgeshire on 5th June 2010, World Environment Day.

HeatingSave was nominated and won the Environmental Business of the Year award that was sponsored by Cambridgeshire Constabulary. The representative from Cambridgeshire Constabulary read the following citation before declaring HeatingSave the winner.

HeatingSave have tackled Climate Change and Resource Efficiency by developing a unique building energy management system ("BEMS") that cuts the amount of fossil fuel energy needed to heat and light a building. HeatingSave have invented a heat-loss algorithm that 'learns' the heat loss profile of a building and then uses this to consume the least amount of fuel to heat the building thereby improving and protecting the environment. It does this by switching on the boiler later and switching off earlier on warm days than cold days. Also it automatically turns up/down the boiler flow temperature depending upon the outside temperature.

At the heart of HeatingSave is a state-of-the-art microprocessor controller connected to a number of temperature sensors measuring the external outside temperature, room, hot water tank and heating flow & return temperatures. The computer program prevents Dry Cycling of the boiler, performs Flow/Return Balancing and look-ahead temperature control, and two stage frost control, all of which prevents fuel from being wasted.

Infra-red occupancy detectors detect when the building, or parts of the building, are being used so that HeatingSave can automatically turn down heating when nobody is at work but automatically turn up the heating when people are about.

HeatingSave employs the same science and technology to control immersion heaters, this time saving electricity.

HeatingSave uses light level sensors to monitor externally when it gets dusk or dark, or internally to measure home, business light levels; automatically turning on lights when an area is occupied.

Built into HeatingSave is the ability to control solar panels and use these to heat or pre-heat hot water cylinders. Multiple configurations of panels ranging from those in a southerly position to east/west configurations can be managed by HeatingSave. Temperature sensors are placed within the panel (or panel flow), on the return and within the zone to be heated. HeatingSave uses these to control when the solar circulation pump is switched on and off. Up to four "solar heat dump" zones are managed by HeatingSave. These typically will be hot water cylinders, (one or two coil types), heat stores, swimming pools or even a heated towel rail. Provision is made for a changeover control valve on each zone so that heating priorities can be set depending upon the amount of solar radiation available.

Unlike simple solar panel controllers, HeatingSave provides automatic control of the resulting hot water by directing it to either the hot taps or as pre-heated water into a secondary cylinder

HeatingSave is Government approved to save fuel costs by the Carbon Trust, DEFRA and Energy Savings Trust.

HeatingSave is currently being installed, site wide, by Bedfordshire Police, Cambridgeshire Fire Service and Essex Fire Service. It is also installed in a number of schools.

Councillor Jonathan Gray, executive councillor for environment said: "World Environment Day is a day that stimulates awareness and with the aim of enhancing action. It is going to be a great event and I would like to encourage residents to visit the exhibition to find out more about what they can do to help the district's environment."