A heat pump launched in 2012 that has helped to halve energy bills for social housing residents has been recognised as a green heating pioneer after being added to the Science Museum Group collection.
The British-made Kensa Shoebox accounts for around a third of all UK ground source heat pump installations and, as the world’s smallest and quietest product of its kind at its launch, “revolutionised the sustainable heating of flats and apartments, so enabling a path to the decarbonisation of heat in towns and cities”, according to the museum’s website.
It becomes the first and only ground source heat pump to be included in the Science Museum collection, joining more than seven million ‘historic and significant’ items collected and documented by the group since 1851 from the worlds of science, technology, engineering, medicine, transport and media.
Details of more than 380,000 objects from the collection, including the Kensa Shoebox, are published online.
As well as being showcased on the website the product will also form part of an exhibit within the Science Museum’s new Adani Green Energy gallery, allowing the public to see it in the flesh.
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Kensa Heat Pumps CEO Tamsin Lishman said: “Kensa is bringing ground source heat pumps to flats, terraced streets, tower blocks, period properties and other supposedly hard-to-decarbonise homes and buildings, taking people out of fuel poverty, and making homes warm and comfortable through renewable technology.”
“Seeing our ‘little white box’ featured in this exhibition and immortalised in the Science Museum collection as a green heating pioneer is a remarkable achievement, but one this incredible product fully deserves.”
Kensa recently launched the Shoebox NX, a successor to the original product.
Science Museum’s lead curator Oliver Carpenter said that the new Adani Green Energy gallery should help inspire the public by showcasing what has already been achieved.
“It shares contemporary stories of individuals, organisations and communities all imagining the future of low carbon energy, but it also spotlights some of the earliest ideas and technologies created by the imaginations of previous generations,” he said.
“By taking a long view of the energy revolution and showcasing impressive technologies of the past, alongside today’s low carbon options, we hope to inspire visitors to imagine a low carbon energy future.”
