Generating our own renewable energy with our 200m borehole heat source pumps at our Women’s Hospital
With the support of the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), we have been granted £54.3 million in funding to improve upon the sustainability of our Women’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital.
A portion of the funding has been allocated to implementing heat-generating ‘borehole’ pumps so that we can naturally extract energy to power our hospital and significantly reduce our carbon footprint.
What is a borehole?
A borehole is a narrow shaft bored into the ground used to extract heat from the ground. To ensure no environmental implications, we ensure all water extracted from the boreholes is supplemented to keep the water table balanced. In the process of extracting and supplementing water, we can generate heat from the boreholes and transfer this into energy.
Borehole drilling is different and environmentally conscientious compared to ‘fracking’ which involves extracting oil and natural gases through ground-damaging drilling and earth-shattering techniques. Borehole drilling involves locating sources of water so that drilling impacts are minimised and the water table is not disrupted.
Our journey so far…
We will be able to extract 2.4 megawatts of power from our initial boreholes, with plans to build eight in total, all interconnected to sustainably power our hospital, all the while remaining carbon-neutral with no environmental damage.
Graham Walsh, our Project Manager said:
“We’re really pleased to be implementing this system to improve our environmental conscientious approach to powering our hospital. Becoming net-zero is a priority to us at our Women’s Hospital so that we can look towards a more sustainable and self-sufficient future, reducing costs and keeping operations carbon-free.”
To build these boreholes, we have been working closely with the Geological Surveys team (Breathe Energy) to locate areas where water is present through ultrasound technology. As we have progressed, we will be able to extract heat from the ground at 20 degrees Celsius. With the heat source pump, the heat is raised to 40 degrees Celsius and into the hospital system, further raised to 70 – 80 degrees Celsius through our systems.
We commenced our drilling works at the Women’s Hospital on 3 October 2022 and aim to complete all eight boreholes by the summer (2023). We’re excited to continue our path to a more sustainable future, taking crucial strides towards our Trust’s commitment towards net zero for our NHS carbon footprint by 2040.