Dr T. G. N. ‘Graeme’ Haldane — Scottish Heat Pump Pioneer

Abstract

Dr T. G. N. ‘Graeme’ Haldane was a visionary proponent of a national, rational electricity strategy. He was a pioneer of the National Grid and displayed a keen, early interest in nuclear power and renewable energy sources. It appears that he was the first engineer in Britain (and, possibly, internationally) to construct, monitor and document the performance of a heat pump system for space heating. He built his experimental heat pump system at the Foswell Estate, Auchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland. The environmental heat source that he used was the estate’s water supply, which is likely to have been derived from groundwater springs in the estate grounds. In this case, Haldane’s heat pump can be described as Britain’s earliest ground-source heat pump.