Heat Pump City of the Year award for Turnova

Out of more than 20 applications from all over Europe, Turnova, designed by boydens engineering, won the award DecarBuilding in The Heat Pump City of the Year Award by the European Heat Pump Association. The prize is assigned to the project which has the most efficient, smart and sustainable heat pump but taking into account criteria’s such as CO2 reductions, improvement of indoor thermal comfort, sCOP level, easy installation, aesthetic design improvement, ... The project situated in the center of Turnhout has already won numerous of awards. The projects consists of a total of 250 homes, a total of 30 shops including restaurants, bars, a hotel, a fitness and wellness center. The new city district will be connected to the pedestrian only market square, complete with a large underground parking constructed under the project site. The Turnova project shows the added value that can be found within the grouping of smaller entities like housing into a larger energy-cluster, making it possible to optimize technical solutions beyond the optimum that could be reached by individual solutions. The site is equipped with an Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage system (ATES), whereby the underground water well stores heat or cold. The ATES consists of six boreholes (3 source pairs), with a spacing of at least 70 meters. The depth of the sources is approximately 100-130 meters deep. There is also a loop system that distributes the free cooling (12°C) over the site. The heat demand is covered by a decentralized water-water heat pump for each entity, which extracts energy from the thermal loop. Besides the large added value on energy efficiency, this installation will be space saving and will have a large positive impact on the air quality in and around the site, thanks to the absence of central heaters and their combustion process, and cooling towers. Find out more on Turnova or on the heat pump city of the year award.