Offaly company leading the way on home energy retrofits in Ireland and further afield

An Offaly company is leading the way on home energy retrofits in a cross border project.

Based in Birr, Grant is Ireland’s leading heating technology manufacturer and it is supporting the Ulster University and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) in their RULET – Rural-Led Energy Transition – initiative aimed at reducing or eliminating the risk of low-income households being left behind in the transition to clean, smart, integrated energy systems.

The RULET initiative is part of the SPIRE 2 (Storage Platform for the Integration of Renewable Energy) project which is a €6.7m EU-funded Interreg VA, cross border project which aims to evaluate, develop, and facilitate the wide-scale deployment of consumer-owned energy storage technologies, to operate profitably in the changing energy markets in Ireland and the UK.

Led by the Ulster University and the NIHE, RULET is focused on making the full benefits of smart energy technology available to the most vulnerable households in the western counties of Northern Ireland, a wind energy hotspot. This includes the installation of the Grant hybrid heat pump system which has been specially designed for social housing.

The first part of the project aims to enable people to avail of agile tariffs - by running the Grant heat pumps to charge Sunamp heat batteries, when wind energy is available on the system, NIHE tenants will be able to avail of exceptionally low home heating prices.

Commenting on the company’s involvement in the initiative Barry Gorman, National Renewables Sales Manager at Grant said, “We are delighted to be supporting the Ulster University and Northern Ireland Housing Executive in this initiative and helping to advance the deployment of renewables throughout the UK and Ireland.