Ability heat pump ready fan coil unit shortlisted for Commercial HVAC Product of the Year – Cooling Technology
The award recognises the product that has made a clear market impact in terms of performance, energy savings, emissions reduction, or user experience for operators or engineers. Ability’s heat pump-ready fan coil unit is suitable for both new and refurbishment projects and is designed for use in a wide range of commercial buildings, including offices, retail, leisure, care homes and education.
“The adoption of heat pumps and district heat networks in commercial properties has led to a sustainability paradox. Traditional FCUs are designed for use with gas boilers and need workarounds to adapt them for low temperatures, such as additional ancillary coils, fans or both, which reduces operational efficiency and increases embodied carbon. Essentially, this is impacting the carbon gains from renewable heating.
We designed our heat pump-ready FCU to address this challenge. The result is an FCU that preserves unit size, air volume and acoustic performance without impacting its carbon footprint. This means engineers and building designers can achieve high-performance cooling and heating without compromise. Something critical in commercial premises where acoustic limits, space restrictions, energy and carbon targets must all be balanced.”
Ability’s heat pump-ready fan coil unit features a redesigned coil with an increased surface area to maintain output at lower flow temperatures. Re-circuited layouts reduce pressure drops and pump energy use. While contra-flow design further enhances heat transfer, enabling efficient chilled-water cooling and low-temperature heating without additional components.
The unit matches the operational efficiency of standard FCUs whilst reducing the pump energy use, which delivers operational carbon reductions. By removing the requirement for ancillary coils and without the need to increase the FCU size, embodied carbon can also be reduced. It was launched in December ‘24 and has been specified in a number of commercial projects, including One Glass Wharf in Bristol. It was designed to meet the strict constraints on footprint, acoustic performance and system design, delivering a heat pump ready system without impacting heating and cooling delivery.
The project involved transitioning from an 82/71°C boiler-fed system to a 45/35°C heat pump setup, without changing the unit footprint. A portion of the fan coils were also supplied multi-room ready, enabling future upgrade to individual room control through simple software changes. Technical testing confirmed that embodied carbon was reduced by 6.2% (TM65 verified), electrical consumption cut by 24% and air volume reduced by 18%, with no impact on cooling and heating outputs or acoustic performance.
The heat pump ready fan coil unit is suitable for use in commercial office buildings, Cat A and Cat B fit outs, retrofit or refurbishment projects where unit sizing is fixed and new builds targeting low-carbon and all-electric systems. It is also ideal for any specification planning a future transition from boilers to heat pumps or multi-room projects needing modular upgrade flexibility. The heat pump-ready fan coil unit is now set to roll out across Ability’s core Matrix and EVO ranges. For further information or support with heat pump ready FCU specification, contact our technical team.
