Westgate Leisure Centre

The publicly owned Westgate Leisure Centre in Chichester is a multi-function gym and health facility in Southeast England. The centre has a 33 meter, 6-lane swimming pool, leisure pool, and a children’s play area. It also has a large gym, sports hall, sauna, and skate park.

Breakdown of project

Client
Chichester District Council

Sector
Public Sector/Leisure

Location
Chichester, UK

Technology
VirtuHOT

Brief

The thermal demand for heating the swimming pool, providing hot shower facilities led the Chichester District Council to investigate alternatives to natural gas while still meeting energy demand, providing an effective hedge against volatile energy markets and simultaneously decarbonising the leisure centre’s heating demand.

Virtu Solution

After an initial feasibility study a modern solar thermal system using Naked Energy’s VirtuHOT tubes proved to be the best solution, combined with traditional PV, heat pumps, and CHP units.

420 VirtuHOT solar thermal collectors, comprising 315 m2 of area, are the primary source of pool heating. A sophisticated system design was implemented for this project to allow a coupling of the many different energy sources. The VirtuHOT solar thermal collectors combine with PV panels, two Air Source Heat Pumps, and a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit on site.

Virtu was installed by our trusted delivery partners OHM Energy and SolarUK.

Benefits

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24.4 tonnes of annual CO2 savings

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168 kWpth thermal capacity

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Protection from volatile energy prices