How well do we do as a sector highlighting how innovation is reshaping heat networks in the UK (and beyond)

Under the Heat Network Industry Councils HotCore (Heat Network Optimisation Taskforce and Capacity Enhancement) programme 24 industry players came together on Wednesday to look at innovation in the sector, discuss how we identify priority innovations and accelerate future innovation deeper into the sectors activity.

I had a little role on trying to keep the chosen format to time, which allowed me to deploy my long forgotten doorman skills of the 1980s. Not that tempers were fraying more that the passion and enthusiasm to share where presenting challenges to move onto the next table / subject.

We covered a huge amount of material that we will hopefully do justice in summarizing into the key points that will steer us through to the next phase on enabling 5 (or so) key innovations that can be placed into the elevated platform that we hope HotCore will provide across the sector.

My inbox and other involved have seen the debate continue, with heat networks set for exciting deeper development and a new scale and pace of deployment that hasnt been seen before in the UK - it is clear that everyone felt that innovation had a key role to play in delivering a lower cost of levelised heat from the networks, that the customer experience can be further enhanced and this was a sector keen to do more and do better from the learning. (but we also needed to tackle some obstacles in innovations way)

Although I am not going to attempt a full summary, what i have been ruminating on is how can we share the learning that have already been captured from innovations for the benefit of the sector, how do we profile these innovation and take them on collaboratively to the next step, how do we better highlight the need and the scale of the innovation needs particularly to engage complementary sectors to share there learning and endeavors with us and ultimately is now the time for some large scale collaborative innovation programmes targeting such things as retrofitting existing housing stock at scale.

Worth noting that this engagement came about in only 14 days from concept approval to actual event - definitely only made possible by the new Heat NIC coordinator Nicola Gulley with Nathan Sanders Richard Harrison Jody Pittaway Charlotte Owen Alice Bullock driving the planning and the event forward.

Insightful contributions from all and i trust you all felt it was time well spent, albeit the onus is now definitely on us to take that input and shape the next steps.

Anyone wanting to add value to the discussion please comment. I would be particularly interested to hear what academic institutions could be part of this innovation drive, what sharing approaches and platforms have worked for you previously and what innovation projects are you keen to do in the heat networks space (and what partners are you looking for)