Citycon invited Espoo’s SPARCS partners to visit the Lippulaiva construction site in November 2021. Part of the project, the team headed to the site to get a full tour in the upcoming shopping center. The tour was led by Elina Ekelund and Risto Seppo from Citycon and ended with an introduction to Lippulaiva’s energy system. 

Lippulaiva shopping centre has deep roots in the Espoonlahti area. The old Lippulaiva has been serving local residents since 1993 and was demolished in 2017 to give room for a shopping centre that will full fill the future needs. The new Lippulaiva will be opened in March 2022, and it will be twice the size of the old shopping centre. It will be a true urban cross point: The new metro line and bus terminal are fully integrated with the shopping centre, on top of which eight residential blocks and 550 new apartments are built.  

In addition, there will be charging stations for more than 100 cars and parking spaces for about 1,000 bicycles. The shopping centre will be opened in the spring and soon retail spaces can be handed over to the tenants to build up stores and restaurants to serve the citizens in the Espoonlahti area (and beyond).  

The Lippulaiva shopping centre is also one of the demo sites in the SPARCS project and therefore is a test bed for new innovations and energy positive solutions. As a part of the construction site visit, the project team got an introduction to the state-of-the-art heating and cooling solutions by Adven.  

Lippulaiva’s energy system, implemented by the energy company Adven, is not only one of the most advanced energy solutions in the world, but also one of the largest geoenergy sites used in a commercial premise in Europe. 
The heating and cooling of the Lippulaiva city centre will be produced by renewable, carbon-neutral geothermal energy derived from the bedrock. The regenerative geoenergy system will not only provide heating and cooling for the shopping centre, but also for the nearby residential- and service buildings. Lippulaiva will be a carbon neutral building in terms of energy consumption from the opening day. 

Adven’s energy system consists of heat pumps (with a heat pump capacity of 4000 kW) and 171 energy wells drilled below the shopping centre with an average depth of 314 meters and a total length of 50 kilometers. By injecting excess heat recovered from summertime air conditioning and refrigeration systems into the geoenergy field, the energy wells are also functioning as energy storage, which increases the capacity and overall efficiency of the system. 

During the construction site visit we took a glimpse of Adven’s energy system by visiting the technical room located some levels below the shopping centre. Adven’s Lasse Aitamaa gave the team fascinating introduction. Main components of the system, such as pumps, compressors, pipes and electric boilers are located in the technical room. The complete heating and cooling energy of Lippulaiva will be directed to or from this room. 

After successful testing of the system, the energy production in Lippulaiva is already up and running. Adven will also manage the operations, development and 24/7 remote monitoring of the energy system. 

The team learned much about the demo and it is always interesting to see the actual site, and of course to see colleagues face to face. We can’t wait for the grand opening of the new Lippulaiva shopping centre!