District Heating Scheme works to be completed mid-August

By Hayden Moore 

WONDERING why the Belgard Road has been dug up?

Pipe-laying works are being carried out along the Belgard Road and on TU Dublin – Tallaght Campus as part of the Tallaght District Heating Scheme (TDHS).

Also known as the Tallaght District Heating Project or Network, trading as Heatworks, Ireland’s first publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company, is set to provide low carbon heat and hot water to local community buildings.

Heat waste generated by the servers at the Amazon Web Services Data Centre on the Belgard Road will be farmed and redistributed through an underground network of pipes.

Ground was broken on the TDHS at the end of May on TU Dublin – Tallaght Campus.

“Works commenced six weeks ago on the campus at TUD before moving on to Belgard Road,” South Dublin County Architect Eddie Conroy tells The Echo.

“The civils works are being carried out by GMC Utilities Group who are specialists in this field of work.

“Heat-pipes are manufactured by Logstor in Denmark (now owned by Kingspan).

“Works on Belgard Road will be completed by mid-August.

“Works will then commence on Belgard Square North with a completion date end of September.

“Every effort is being made to reduce impact of the works on traffic in Tallaght.”

Heat is expected to be supplied to customers South Dublin County Council, with County Hall and Tallaght Library, and the college campus, from early 2022.

This is scheduled to be followed by the linking of a new 135-unit affordable apartment development and the South Dublin County Council Innovation Building to the network.

Deemed “Phase One” by the council, the network of buildings is referred to as “economically feasible to connect”.

“It’s fantastic to see that at long last this amazing innovative scheme to redistribute the excess energy from the Amazon Data Centre to County Hall and TU Dublin is starting to make progress,” Tallaght-Central Cllr Mick Duff says.

“I have to say I am really fascinated by the technology involved here, instead of this excessive waste energy going straight up into the atmosphere, it’s being harnessed and put to excellent use.”

Member states of the EU have all agreed to drastically begin shifting to renewable energy, with Ireland targeting 70 per cent in renewables over the next decade.

AWS is providing the council with the heat and land for the energy centre for free as part of their plan for achieving 100 per cent renewable energy for their global infrastructure – which includes Tallaght – by 2030.

Upon completion of the initial phase, it is estimated that carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced by nearly 1,500 tonnes per year in the South Dublin County area.

Part funded by the European Union’s Inter-Reg NWE programme (Heatnet), a multi-million euro fund promoting the reduction of carbon through district heating in Europe, the TDHS is also backed by a further €4.5 million from the Project Ireland 2040 Climate Action Fund and through the council.