Presentation Girls School – Maynooth

The Pathfinder Programme aims to implement a comprehensive range of deep energy retrofits and renewable heating solutions in schools, with the goal of testing innovative approaches, developing best practices, and building capacity for a scalable, replicable energy retrofit model. This model is key to supporting the education sector in achieving its energy efficiency and decarbonisation targets.

MasterTherm has been at the forefront of these efforts, contributing to feasibility studies commissioned by the Department of Education over the past five years. Our decades of experience integrating heat pump technology into existing buildings has proven invaluable in shaping sustainable heating solutions for Irish schools.

Established in the Czech Republic in 1996, MasterTherm’s systems have been engineered to handle a wide range of climatic conditions, from harsh winter temperatures plummeting to -25°C to mild conditions reaching +15°C during the heating season. Despite the occasional extreme cold, these sub-zero conditions are minimal when considering the total number of hours in the heating season. This variability requires heat pumps to be designed with intelligent software capable of managing both the heat pump itself and supplementary heating sources, ensuring efficient and effective control of temperature fluctuations.

Sizing heat pump systems to cater for the most extreme conditions is neither economical nor ecologically sound. Over decades, MasterTherm has refined control strategies that prioritise efficiency across a wide range of temperatures. While Ireland’s heating season doesn’t typically experience such severe extremes, outdoor temperatures can vary significantly over the course of a single day, making the application of these advanced control strategies particularly relevant to Irish plant rooms.

In collaboration with Ipsum Engineering, MasterTherm has designed a hybrid heating system for Presentation Girls School in Maynooth. This system is optimally controlled via integration with the local Building Management System (BMS), using advanced heat pump software to maximise the utilisation of renewable energy while minimising reliance on auxiliary heat sources, in this case, gas boilers.

The installed heat pump system includes a cascade of three BA90iP (R290) 50kW heat pumps dedicated to space heating, along with one BA45iP (22kW) heat pump unit for domestic hot water. This project represents another shining example of how commercial buildings can significantly reduce their carbon footprint through the implementation of innovative, high-efficiency heating systems.

1 PresentationGirlsSchool Install