Northumberland business are double award-winners for Berwick renewable project

Calibrate Energy Engineering has scooped two prestigious awards for its flagship installation in the Scottish Borders. The project, completed in three stages over four years, has this year won Non-Domestic Project of the Year at the ACR & Heat Pump Awards, which follows its Gold Award for Technical Innovation at the Royal Highland Show (RHS) last year.

The awards recognised the scale and innovation of the powerful 8.2MW ground source heat pump installation, which produces enough energy to heat a small town, but in reality, dries one of the largest tonnages of grain in the country through this renewable form of energy.

Commenting on the double award win, Susie McDonald Co-founder of Calibrate Energy Engineering said:

“We are thrilled to have been recognised for not one but two awards for this large-scale project.

“Innovation is at the heart of everything we do and visibility like this helps us to get closer to our vision of making net zero a reality for businesses through innovative technologies. Our company puts a lot of effort into customer satisfaction, and we are thrilled that our efforts have been recognised with these awards.”

Calibrate has worked collaboratively with their client W L Douglas and Sons Ltd, a progressive agri-business located near Berwick-upon-Tweed, to develop their heating and chilling systems, allowing both the grain and agricultural haulage side of the business to grow.

This significant renewable installation includes three ground source heat pumps (1MW, 6.2MW and 1MW) to expand the capability of their offering and future-proof their growing enterprise. The original system was the first-of-its-kind to provide simultaneous heat and chill, in this case used for an agricultural process, but the same system would be ideal for any high energy-use business to reduce both input costs and carbon footprint.

The innovation of the system lies in an intelligent bespoke Calibrate controller (Calibrate Analyser), which also received an award this year for technical innovation at the RHS. Like a domestic Hive controller but on a larger scale, this tool allows remote access and energy monitoring ensuring the highest energy efficiencies are obtained reducing costs and carbon emissions and can also simulate savings and benefits of future renewable projects such as solar, wind and hydrogen.

Susie added: “In these times of eye-watering energy costs, as a progressive renewables installer, our aim is to help companies to implement solutions to reduce their energy costs and positively impact on the environment to secure a more sustainable and profitable future for their business.

“We invest heavily in research and development to ensure that we remain at the forefront of our industry so to be recognised for this ethos is always a proud moment as both these awards recognised our success in installing commercial-scale ground source heat pumps to an equally visionary business.”

The latest 1MW addition added earlier this year benefits from the Ofgem modified capacity scheme, whereby additional capacity can be added from the original ground loop – 60km of carefully installed underground pipework – and benefit from further government tariff income. This has also created additional space and water heating for the production shed, taking the system’s full capacity to 8.2MW with impressive efficiencies. This 1MW addition alone equates to 229 extra tonnes per annum of carbon saved.

Commenting on picking up the ACR Award on behalf of Calibrate, who exclusively install Mitsubishi heat pumps, was Managing Director Gary Matthews:

“We were against some strong competition in the industry, so it was a great pleasure to win these awards in collaboration with our client and Mitsubishi. The awards are an important event that recognises and celebrates the sheer potential of the renewables heating and chilling industry in an economic and political context helping to drive the government target of carbon zero by 2050 or even earlier.”

Calibrate continue to focus on making net zero a reality for high energy-use businesses, and to date Calibrate have installed 300MW of heat pumps and renewables to high energy-use businesses, whilst preventing the release of tens of thousands of tonnes (and counting) of carbon into the atmosphere.