A GAS-FIRED power station could be built on the site of Tudor Grange Leisure Centre, according to new council plans.
Solihull Council has turned to fossil fuels to power its ‘renewable’ district heat network.
Officers found their original plans to use water heated underground were not viable.
Instead, the council wants to use a combined heat and power plant which could be fed by natural gas.
Town centre buildings such as Tudor Grange Leisure Centre, Solihull College and the Westgate Office development will be heated by the town’s ‘renewable’ heat network if the project gets the go-ahead.
The council says it could build a new power station adjacent to Tudor Grange Leisure Centre, which would need a huge 1.7 megawatt air source heat pump and a 1.6 megawatt gas turbine to heat nearby buildings.
If the network is expanded, the new power plant would have space for extra generators to cope with demand.
An air source heat network works by using condensed air to heat water, akin to a refrigerator in reverse.
The council hopes to start supplying heat to nearby buildings in 2022. The funding for investigating the aquifer beneath Tudor Grange Park was provided by the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Heat Network delivery unit and the West Midlands Combined Authority.
As reported in the Observer in October, borehole drilling in Tudor Grange park proved the ground source heating would not be possible, as ground water could not soak back into the aquifer quickly enough to meet Environment Agency regulations.
