CASTILE AND LEÓN - We install our first industrial heat pump together with AN Group with efficiency of 1,000%

• The facility, located in the municipality of Vizcolozano, in Ávila, will serve the poultry processing plant that the AN Group has in the town.

  Iberdrola supports industry with solutions to improve its energy efficiency and reduce its CO2 emissions in a sustainable and economical way

Iberdrola has installed its first industrial heat pump at the AN Group's poultry processing plant, located in the municipality of Vicolozano, in Ávila. The installation, which uses waste heat from the plant's cooling units, achieves a Coefficient of Performance (COP) of 10, equivalent to an efficiency of 1,000%.

Specifically, for every unit of electrical energy used, originating from the waste heat of the plant's chillers (ammonia compressors), the heat pump supplies 10 times that energy in the form of heat. For greater efficiency, the installation, in addition to eliminating the consumption of fossil fuels from the boilers, helps to produce significant savings in electricity and water by not letting it evaporate in the condensers and recovering it to heat the water needed to run the heat pump. 

The project is supported by Next Generation funds through the Programme of aid for energy efficiency actions in SMEs and large companies in the industrial sector, and has obtained a subsidy of approximately 30% of the cost of the heat pump. 

"In the transition to a low-emission economy, it is essential to evolve towards more efficient energy carriers and end uses. In this sense, the heat pump plays a key role in the decarbonisation of industrial processes that use low and medium temperature heat in industries as important for the Spanish GDP as food and agriculture. With this project, Iberdrola positions itself as a leader in the sector with one of the few operational facilities in Spain," says José Luis Hernando of Iberdrola.

"With this solution we are able to find unused waste energy from the factory and, by means of the heat pump, convert it into free energy for our activity. The 1,800 employees, and the 39,000 farmers and livestock farmers integrated in the 168 cooperatives that, as partners, we serve from the AN Group, are very committed to industrial decarbonisation through different solutions, and for several years we have had another heat pump installation at our poultry processing plant in Mélida-Navarra", says Guillermo Ruiz, Industrial & Operations Director of the AN Group. 

Electrification of industry

The decarbonisation of industrial heat generation through electrification will accelerate in the coming years thanks to the gradual replacement of fossil fuel boilers with heat pumps powered by renewables. Iberdrola is committed to helping industries in their energy transition, through tailor-made solutions to enable factories to improve their efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions in a sustainable and cost-effective manner.

This process is key to the roadmap for decarbonising the economy in Europe, where approximately 1,952 TWh of energy is consumed annually in industrial thermal processes, of which around 40% takes place at temperatures below 200°C, mainly to heat water or generate steam.

To reduce emissions in these low and medium temperature processes, the solution is the use of heat pumps in combination with energy efficiency measures, while high temperature processes can be solved by hybridised electrification with fuel switching.

Iberdrola places its long experience in thermal energy at the service of its industrial customers, enabling it to offer the most advanced products and solutions and adapt them to each individual process. This is the case of heat pumps, or other resources such as biomass or electric boilers powered from a dedicated solar photovoltaic installation or even incorporating a thermal storage system.