SE6 Task 2: Assess extent of energy opportunities for candidate sites
Task difficulty:
SE6 |
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Overview of task
At this stage of analysis, an assessment of the extent of the energy opportunity for any given candidate site can only be high level, and based on using rules-of-thumb. For information on how to carry out a more detailed assessment of feasibility and viability for any given site see policy objectives SE3 and SE9. As mentioned in the introduction, this task relates only to identifying energy opportunities in relation to new development. There may also be stand-alone energy opportunities (such as large scale wind, for example) that may not have any physical connection to new (or existing) non-energy development and would be covered under SE3.
Some rough rules of thumb to assess the extent of energy opportunity for any candidate site are given in the table below (These are based on AECOM’s experience and are not drawn from any published guidance, as we are not aware of any) . The rules of thumb for district heating/ CHP do not apply for larger candidate sites (say of more than 100 dwellings, or 2ha commercial) as they may be able to support district heating or CHP in their own right.
Large scale wind power
| Rule of thumb to indicate if there is any potential | Rationale | Caveats |
|---|---|---|
| Within 1km of a non-residential or residential site | For a distance greater than this, running a cable to supply the development from the wind turbine is likely to be prohibitively expensive | Connection may still be prohibitively expensive over this distance, depending on the terrain, other services and obstacles and so on. |
| More than 0.4km from a residential site | This is to prevent any possible impact on residential amenity of new dwellings from noise | For very large mixed sites, of several hectares, it may be possible to use the commercial development as a buffer between any wind turbines and residential development |
District heating / CHP
| Rule of thumb to indicate if there is any potential | Rationale | Caveats |
|---|---|---|
| Within 5km of an existing or proposed power station, or energy from waste plant | For large sources of waste heat, it can be viable to transport heat over this sort of distance if there is a sufficient heat demand at the end of the pipe | The viability of this could only be established from more detailed study. |
| Within 0.5km of significant potential anchor loads, such as leisure centres, Universities, and so on, and within 0.5km of areas of existing dwellings with a heat demand density of greater than 3MW/km2. | District heating networks are more viable where there are existing heat loads that can provide an early source of revenue. | The viability of this could only be established from more detailed study. |
| Within 0.5km of significant sources of existing or proposed heat, such as district heating networks or CHP installations | or these areas, a candidate site may be able to connect up to the heat network. |
The viability of this will depend on the size of the candidate site. A small site may need to be closer for this to be viable, whilst a large site may potentially be viable slightly further away. The viability of this could only be established from more detailed study. |
As explained in the introduction to this policy objective, we anticipate that you would take the rough guidance on energy potential for different development sites set out above and feed that into a more extensive “sieving” process for candidate sites, considering a wide range of different criteria. It is for you to decide on the amount of weight you wish to give to the energy opportunities critieria as part of the sieving process.
