Bitcoin is the future of local and community renewable energy trading and EV charging

Dr Jemma Green, co-founder and chair of Power Ledger.

A new bitcoin company has raised AU$17 million (£10.3m or $13.7m) in 72 hours to support a revolutionary technology platform that will allow electricity producers and consumers to trade directly with each other in tiny units of power.

This article first appeared last week on The Fifth Estate.

Power Ledger is at the forefront of a disruptive wave affecting the energy market that will see the end of the dominance of centralised generation and the increasing participation of building owners, smaller renewable energy suppliers and electric vehicle owners in a peer-to-peer marketplace, all made possible by the new, internet-based encrypted currency, bitcoin.

Consumer are the ultimate disruptors, David Martin, Power Ledger’s co-founder and managing director says. “Consumers have said, ‘I don’t want to buy energy from a coal-fired station’, instead saying this model of energy transaction is what they want to participate in’.“The concept of peer-to-peer [energy] trading is something that has universal appeal to customers … it’s a demonstration that the community wants to be part of the power economy of the future.”

“The concept of peer-to-peer [energy] trading is something that has universal appeal to customers … it’s a demonstration that the community wants to be part of the power economy of the future.”

Dr Jemma Green is the other co-founder and chair of Power Ledger. Her background is in financing and accounting at JP Morgan in London but also financing environmental sectors. In 2013 she returned to Perth and did a PhD in Energy Markets and Disruptive Innovation and also featured as a member of our Sustainability Salon for Perth and WA.

In a podcast with bitcoin.com website she explains how she came by the idea for Power Ledger. She saw that in Australia 20 per cent of houses have rooftop solar but hardly any are on high-rise apartment buildings. She saw the potential for these buildings acting as energy retailers, supplying their residents, and designed a system for a building in Perth.

However, she was unable to find software that allocated the electricity to each apartment until she met some blockchain developers in January last year, and realised blockchain was perfect for her needs.

A problem was identified with the power grid, which is that if some apartment residents are using local energy, fewer are using the grid and so those consumers will pay proportionately more. Power Ledger was formed in May last year, just after the birth of her daughter, to explore how blockchain could circumvent this problem by allocating small transactions to each apartment.

A pilot project in a retirement village south of Perth from August to December 2016 proved the success of the concept. A second trial was conducted in Auckland with the local network operator and linked up with the banking sector to complete the loop.

Sell your solar power when you’re out and don’t need it

“It means that I can sell to others the electricity I might have utilised when I’m not in my apartment,” Green says.

“Schools and any partially occupied building owners can do the same. If I’m not using that electricity, then it can be spread equally across everybody in the apartment block or network. This also incentivises people to use less electricity as they can sell their unused power and make money.”

Power Ledger’s platform connects to smart meters to tally how much power is generated and how much is used. Its software is installed and the revenue information is extracted into the blockchain. It is priced differently according to the time of day and the laws of supply and demand.

The blockchain can be used to fractionalise the power stored in the battery or that is directly generated, and allocate it.

Some of the power may be owned by a third party. For example, a solar farm can be part owned by investors, say a pension scheme, which recoups the revenue from sales.

Presently, if an apartment has rooftop solar and is selling its surplus back to the energy company it will typically not be paid for 60 days. With Power Ledger’s system, participants can monitor their revenue in real time.


“You could also have a marketplace, and this could bring the price down,” Green says. “Supply and demand would set the price. The cost curves for batteries and solar are coming down. It’s low cost electricity.”

Power Ledger issues tokenised values called Sparkz for a unit of electricity, representing one low-value unit in the host country. Electricity is priced in the local currency. Suppliers will be paid in Sparkz at the local cost of power. If the unit price is 30c/kWh they will receive 30 Sparkz. E.g. 1 Sparkz = 1 AUD.

POWRs are another token, which represent investments in the company. Their price can vary, but this does not affect the cost for electricity for the everyday consumer. It is these tokens which are being offered on the market.

“The more application posts offer these, the more competition there is. We’ve created one billion and are selling 350 million at the moment in an initial coin offering (ICO),” Green says.

“We sold 190 million of these last week to raise 17mAU$ in 72 hours in a public pre-sale of 100 million Power Ledger tokens — called POWRs — and a discounted private pre-sale of 90 million POWRs.

“On 8 September we open the public sales and our supporters and platform users say they want to have the option at buying at a market price. This will be determined by the number of tokens left divided by the amount of money pledged in the sale.”

This sale will last for four weeks. Tokens can be bought from the website tge.Power Ledger.io. David Martin believes it is “not unreasonable to expect” that this next offer will raise $20-30 million.

The Sparkz power tokens are effectively a means for markets to trade and self-regulate, says Green. Utilities will purchase the tokens and use them as bonds to trade with customers.

People in the banking industry are a little sceptical of blockchain. This is because there is much vapourware out there, Green believes. “A country’s laws needs to be attached to a project in order to support and validate it,” she explains.

“Power Ledger has a platform, the first in Australia. Our lawyers say our tokens are not a financial product as such, but they are designed to the same standard, with a constitution, shareholders and rules under national corporate law, in order to provide confidence.”

The second pilot was across networks and included banks, which it was really hard to persuade to be involved.

Use bitcoins to pay for charging electric vehicles

In the future Power Ledger hopes to use the experience in a project involving solar-powered apartments in Fremantle, Perth. One of these will possess a shared electric vehicle (EV), charged from the panels, which any member of the public can use.

They will be able to pay for it with the bitcoin platform. They will also be able to charge their own electric vehicle on the charging point. All of this gives the building an income stream on the sale of their generated electricity to EV owners.

This means of selling investment in energy projects could replace power purchase agreements in the future. Instead of a generator selling to a small number of large customers they could sell to many small consumers.

Therefore a developer of a community energy project could sell small amounts to purchasers and in so doing provide liquidity by using the tokens for trading the assets. Power Ledger calls this “fractionalised ownership” or “asset germination”. Green says that this approach will be deployed on a project in the near future and that they are in conversation with financial exchanges that could partner on this.

“Not everyone can afford solar panels,” she says. ‘The people who are paying for it are those who can afford it the least. So our platform will provide low cost renewable power to people who don’t have solar panels while utilising the grid and maintaining its relevance.

“It will also work for any type of electricity. It’s ambivalent about the source, so could be used for wind. Wind and solar are good partners as one is often providing power without the other, lessening the need for storage.”

Green recently attended a gathering hosted by Richard Branson about blockchain on his island where she heard about other social uses for blockchain. For example blockchain is being used to eliminate land theft in places like Georgia and Afghanistan where it’s being used to update the land registry.

“It’s about the democratisation of power,” Green says. “We see ourselves as being a distributed ledger for distributed energy markets. It’s a revolution, away from the one way street of the century old system.

“The old centralised system will continue but we will have a hybrid one. This disruption is happening with our without Power Ledger but what I think our system offers is to do this without the destruction of value.”

David Thorpe is the author of Solar Technology and The One Planet Life.

Europe starts work on making buildings smarter

The European Commission is proposing that a voluntary scheme for rating the “smart readiness” of buildings be adopted by the end of 2019. This scheme will include the development of a smart readiness indicator, and a methodology to calculate this.

Buildings are becoming micro-energy hubs, but the building sector is lagging behind in understanding the implications.

(A version of this article was published on The Fifth Estate on 10 July 2017.)

In Europe, part of the problem is a lack of high-quality data on the building stock. This is hampering efforts to reduce the amount of energy buildings use. There is no consistent data to form a baseline for the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) that rate buildings’ energy use.

This problem is to be tackled from one direction by the development of a voluntary “smart readiness indicator” (SRI) for buildings. The SRI would measure buildings’ capacity to use ICT and electronic systems to optimise operation and interact with the grid.

But, just as there’s no consistent data, there is also no universally accepted definition of what makes a smart building, and there are few initiatives directly linked to indicators.

So work is now underway to try to define what an SRI for buildings looks like.

Why do it?

A smart building environment connects with many processes. Source: BPIE

An SRI’s eventual purpose is to raise awareness amongst building owners and occupants of the value of the electronic automation and monitoring of technical building systems, and to provide confidence and transparency to building users regarding the actual energy and cash savings generated.

An SRI would also align building energy performance – and the current drive to create a Single European Energy Market – with another pan-European idea: the Digital Single Market.

The rationale is that digitalisation of the energy system is rapidly changing the energy landscape, allowing easier integration of renewables, smart grids and the establishment of “smart-ready” buildings.

The benefits of 'smart buildings' Source: BPIE

As with most things in European legislation, the development of an SRI is complex. It’s bound up with the European Commission’s current process to revise a directive to improve the energy performance of buildings. By 2050, the aim is to decarbonise the building stock as part of developing a secure, competitive and decarbonised Europe-wide energy system.

This revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) was originally meant to incorporate targeted incentives to promote smart-ready systems and digital solutions in the built environment, but has since become less ambitious.

The aim is to promote energy efficiency in buildings and to support cost-effective building renovation with a view to the long term goal of decarbonising the highly inefficient existing European building stock. It’s part of a wider review of the energy efficiency legislation, combining:

• reassessment of the EU’s energy efficiency target for 2030 – which was just set at a lamentably low rate of 27 per cent
• a review of the core articles of the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive
• reinforcing the enabling financing environment including the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI)

What is an SRI?

According to the European Economic and Social Committee, a smartness indicator will measure a building’s capacity to use ICT and electronic systems to optimise operation and its interaction with the grid by developing a transparent, meaningful indicator that would add value to the EPC without imposing undue data collection or analytical burdens.

Such an indicator would show how capable a building is of letting its occupants assess energy efficiency, control and facilitate their own renewable energy production and consumption, and thus cut energy bills.

A preliminary report for the European Commission’s Energy Directorate by consultants Ecofys with colleagues in a specially created consortium, said these indicators would help with the energy management and maintenance of a building, including automated fault detection; assist in automating the reporting of the energy performance of buildings; assist with data analytics, self-learning control systems and predictive control to optimise building operations; and enable buildings to become active operators in a demand response setting.

The renewable energy context for 'smart buildings'. Source: BPIE.

Ecofys with its colleagues is developing the formal definitions for the indicators as Task 1 of a series of five stages up to the proposal of the standard in April next year.

It has listed the ten services that the indicator could cover as: heating, domestic hot water, cooling, mechanical ventilation, lighting, dynamic building envelope, energy generation, demand side management, electric vehicle charging, and monitoring and control.

The SRI must be open and transparent, in order to promote interoperability, or it will not be fit for purpose. This means that companies involved cannot monopolise or impose their own proprietary standards.

Interoperability means that devices and services are able to talk to each other in the same language. Image: Ecofys

“Smart readiness” necessarily implies a readiness to adapt in response to the needs of the occupant and to empower building occupants to take direct control of their energy consumption and/or generation, for example with the management of heating system based on occupancy sensors and dashboards displaying current and historical energy consumption.

It also implies a readiness to facilitate the maintenance and efficient operation of the building in a more automated and controlled manner, for example by indicating when systems need maintenance or repair, or using CO2 sensors to decide when to increase ventilation.

According to Paul Waide and Kjell Bettgenhäuser of Ecofys, speaking at the first conference on this topic in June, “The SRI should balance the need to reliably capture the smart readiness services and functions with the practicality and potential costs of independent assessment. It needs to be practical and provide the most benefit for the effort and cost of assessment.”

Above all, they said, “It needs to convey information which is salient (meaningful) to end-users, be easy to understand and motivate them to save energy.” It will also have to apply to all types of buildings, new and old.

An example of how the indicator could work.

This development process is expected to be complete by April 2018. Anyone interested in following or participating in the development of the indicator can sign up.

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy efficiency, building refurbishment and renewable energy. See his website here.

Skills gap challenges the rise in offsite construction

Offsite construction methods for building are on the rise, but there is concern over a lack of the necessary skills to meet the increase in demand.

Factory where building sections are assembled before delivery to the site.

A version of this article appeared on The Fifth Estate on 27 April.

Offsite construction for both office and house building – where sections are assembled in factories then transported to the building site for assembly – has a number of advantages:

• Greater speed of construction
• Lower assembly cost
• Higher quality and sustainability – especially airtightness for energy efficiency
• Increased reliability
• Improved health and safety
• Less disruption to the site’s neighbourhood.

Its use is increasing. In a recent UK survey, 42 per cent of employers with over 100 staff said they expect to be using offsite construction methods more in five years’ time, and all of them said they expected the use of precast concrete panels to increase. In particular, 91 per cent anticipated the use of precast concrete frames to rise.

Percentage by which construction companies think offsite construction will increase over the next five years.

Types of offsite construction and how much companies expect them to increase over the next 5 years.

Benefits

The benefits are potentially huge. In the UK the use of “flying factories” by Skanska and Costain for phase one of the Battersea Power Station housing redevelopment resulted in a 44 per cent cut in cost, 73 per cent less rework and a 60 per cent reduction in time.

In another case, 80 per cent of the Leadenhall Building was constructed offsite by Laing O’Rourke, resulting in a 50 per cent reduction in deliveries to site. The same was true of Vinci’s Circle Health building in Reading, England, resulting in a 20 per cent program reduction and a 28 per cent cost saving.

Half of the clients of building companies expect offsite construction only to increase, according to the report. But if this is to happen, from where will the skills to meet this demand come?

The skills gap

The report outlines six key skills areas related to offsite construction:

• digital design
• estimating/commercial
• offsite manufacturing
• logistics
• site management and integration
• onsite placement and assembly.

 Offsite construction skills and functions.

Increasingly, workers will need these skills to move between offsite and onsite environments and so the training for these six areas must evolve to meet the changing demand, says the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).

Of businesses expecting to use offsite construction over the next three to five years, 38 per cent told the CITB they believed they will need new or significantly improved skills within their workforces. Handling and assembly skills are those most in demand, with 81 per cent of employers citing them.

Seven in 10 also mentioned skills relating to the operation of powered equipment, health, safety and welfare, site preparation, disposal of waste, team working and quality control.

Mark Farmer, author of the 2016 Farmer Review on the future of construction for the UK Government, says there is a need to attract high quality talent from among the new generation of students who aspire to a very different, digitally led career.

In the foreword to the new report by CITB, he says we need a two-pronged approach:

“Firstly, adopting more integrated precision engineered ‘pre-manufacturing’ techniques, in turn supported by growing client led demand. Secondly, to evolve a new skills and training landscape alongside the more traditional pathways that enables and supports the implementation of innovative techniques and technologies.”

So let’s take a closer look at the emerging required skillsets:

Designers

Designers will need a new range of digital capabilities. Arguably the most important is the adoption of 3D digital models with rich data (using Building Information Modelling) so that designs can be robustly tested and agreed in advance of manufacture to avoid costly errors and modifications at later stages.

Aligned to this is the need to integrate the design function into early stage planning with the contractor and client. This is a significant break from the norm and challenges designers to adopt a more holistic approach to their role.

Estimators

Given that cost saving is one of the key advantages of offsite, the estimating function becomes an even more crucial one in the sector.

Estimators must account for – and have an understanding of – materials used, transportation costs and risk factors.

For offsite projects, the costing model often puts a far higher proportion of the cost at the outset (that is, before being onsite).

But this can deter clients. Being able to make the case for an alternative value proposition is, therefore, vital.

The technical skills required include developing whole life cycle costs, analysing tender documents and contracts, developing tenders, and understanding the use of BIM.

Offsite manufacturing skills

Offsite manufacturing requires technical skills, like welding, joinery, pre-casting and steel fixing, already present in the construction workforce, plus product and process knowledge.

Product knowledge of concrete, light gauge steel, hot rolled steel, open and closed timber frame, cross laminated timber and structural insulated panels are perfect for most factories in the current market.

Many factories use traditional trades, meaning there is still a healthy market for these skills and those who train them.

However, a growing number of companies are moving towards having multi-skilled operatives who are comfortable with a wider variety of tasks and responsible for quality assurance of finished components.

This means that machinists and other multi-skilled operatives would benefit from basic design knowledge to understand what a finished output should look like and to address any issues that might affect assembly onsite.

Logistics

Offsite logistics requires more patience and control, while the traditional function is frequently “more chaotic”.

Much of this skillset revolves around coordination and integration, so it is important that those involved develop soft skills such as listening and distilling information, as well as problem-solving capabilities.

As with other functions, skills in understanding and using digital models and data become vital here, particularly with regard to planning and project management.

Onsite assembly

Onsite assembly often relies on pre-existing core “tradespeople” skills. However, additional skills, both technical and soft, are also required, together with those traditional ones.

For instance, a crane operator needs new skills in handling much larger, unstable pre-manufactured loads.

Similarly, ground workers need to work to much tighter tolerances so that foundations match precisely the dimensions of the components being assembled.

Technical understanding of products and materials is a key requirement across all roles.

Quality assurance, process management and problem-solving skills are also crucial competencies for both assemblers and site supervisors.

Site management

Adaptability and communication are the key skills for the site management function when it comes to offsite construction.

The role hinges on being able to integrate onsite and offsite functions in one project. In this sense, soft skills, such as time management, attitudes and behaviours are arguably as important as technical skills.

Digital skills are required in reading and using BIM models, to help with correct sequencing and installation. Quality assurance skills and behaviours are also important.

The way forward

Whereas there will always be a space for onsite construction, at least some offsite construction for a project offers so many benefits that it is bound to increase. The infrastructure and industrial sub-sectors have been somewhat slower to adopt the offsite agenda than housing and office space, but they are expected to catch up.

Steve Radley, director of policy at CITB, says:

“The greatest potential currently lies within the housing and commercial sectors, where mass customisation can create the buildings we need more quickly and to higher standards. There are also opportunities to bring the benefits of offsite to large-scale infrastructure projects.

“Successful offsite management hinges on the effective integration of both onsite and offsite functions – and this requires a comprehensive understanding of both aspects,” he adds. 

For anyone considering starting out in the industry, this is a good message to take on board.

David Thorpe is the author of a number of books on energy efficiency, sustainable building and renewable energy, including The Expert Guide To Energy Management In Buildings. Find out more and buy the books here.

Why residential eco-retrofits are failing in the UK

Retrofit projects to make homes more energy efficient are failing, especially when their design is dictated only by financial values, according to the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance (STBA).

It is backing a “Responsible Retrofit” program incorporating health and heritage values and not just financial ones, in order to encourage a new attitude to giving old homes makeovers.

About 25 million British homes were built before 1990 and are in need of retrofits to bring them at least up to modern standards for energy efficiency. And it is generally considered more economic to retrofit the whole house at one go, as I argue in my book the Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

Yet there are many unintended consequences of existing retrofit programs, especially piecemeal ones. They may lead to unhealthy indoor environments, condensation and mould, fabric decay and other problems that affect occupants.

Often programs fail to meet their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, and in some cases even result in an increase in both of these.

Part of the problem is that there is often not a whole house/building approach when retrofit measures are applied. But even when there is a whole building approach similar consequences can ensue. This is because there are different ideas of what is involved in a whole building retrofit. So what are these different ideas?

Responsible retrofits

An earlier report from the STBA called Responsible Retrofit of Traditional Buildings found that most of the problems that occur with retrofits are at the interfaces between elements, technologies for building processes, or through the interactions between the measures taken, people, and the buildings they occupy, many of which are not fully understood.

This is not just a technical issue. Buildings, and people, behave differently and interact differently depending upon the social, economic and environmental context in which they find themselves.

All of these aspects need to be taken account of. The aim of retrofits should be to look for multiple wins: such as how to improve occupant health, the long-term condition of the building fabric, and make it easy to live in.

To achieve this they need to examine the way thermal energy is conducted through the building and where moisture travels and how it is managed, throughout the year-round weather conditions and patterns of occupancy. This is especially true where different materials meet each other.

When retrofits do fail, it’s not “just because we do not sufficiently understand traditional buildings, or have the wrong approach or the wrong standards or skills”, the STBA says.

“It is because we have an economic and political system which is driving misallocation of finance, land and housing, depletion of natural resources and pollution.”

This is really the reason why The Green Deal programme failed so abysmally, as I have shown before – and why the German equivalent has succeeded.

What values should be incorporated then? The STBA says we need to account for heritage, well-being, community, biodiversity and health – values which, for most people, give meaning to their world more than money does.

But the organisation is pessimistic this can happen without an ethical approach being taken to the allocation of finances for retrofitting. It believes that this demands that the economy and society should “have sustainability and culture at their heart”.

That is why it is issuing a call to rethink the whole approach. It argues:

“The process of retrofit, if carried out correctly, has great potential not only to repair the environment but also to improve people’s lives. Unless we start with the Whole House Advanced/Responsible Retrofit position our efforts will lead to unintended consequences and may be counterproductive even in the most narrowly measured terms.”

To this end the STBA has launched a Responsible Retrofit website, which is full of resources, one of the most useful of which is the Guidance Wheel.

This interactive tool represents over 50 measures that can be used in the refurbishing of the buildings and allows you to explore their interrelationships including the user’s interest, motivation and knowledge about the building:

Since its launch, it has been taken up by several other organisations, including the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and Construction Excellence Wales.

But until it is mainstreamed into the general drive to upgrade the performance of all older buildings, rather than just heritage ones, then piecemeal retrofitting, driven by economics, will prevail in the marketplace, and with it the risk of failure to deliver the desired outcomes.

David Thorpe is the author of:

• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment 
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry 
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology
• The One Planet Life
• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S., UNEP)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on using Green Bonds for energy efficiency in buildings

EU campaign to improve building efficiency faces uphill battle

Green member of the Linz municipal government in Austria Eva Schobesberger says accounting rules on energy efficiency investment need to change.

Last month saw the launch of the Investor Confidence Project Europe, ironically the brainchild of an American NGO, the Environmental Defense Fund. Its purpose is to help connect real estate developers who need private investment with quality-guaranteed energy efficiency projects that deliver both financial and environmental results.

One of the founder members of the group is Deutsche Bank’s European Energy Efficiency Fund. The launch was welcomed by Lada Strelnikova, director Deutsche asset management and investment manager for the EEEF, who said, “As an alternative, innovative financing instrument for energy efficiency projects in the public sector, we, in Europe, believe standardised energy upgrade approaches can accelerate project progress and facilitate a more structured project development approach to get access to financing.”

ICP’s Investor Ready Energy Efficiency certified projects are accredited against industry standards and best practices, which is intended to reduce transaction costs and to increase confidence in savings to help engage private capital and scale up energy efficiency investments globally.

“The potential market for building retrofits in Europe is upwards of €100 billion [AU$155.66b] a year, presenting a massive, untapped investment opportunity,” ICP Europe’s director Panama Bartholomy said.

“It offers investors a common language to compare risks and savings makes projects simpler, decisions easier, and project performance more reliable. We invite cities, building owners and local governments to help develop these types of projects and meet our investor network to help finance them.”

Red tape barrier

But there may not be a queue of people rushing to beat on their door, at least from the public sector. One reason amongst many is a clause in European Commission accounting rules defining how the costs of retrofitting public buildings for energy efficiency are accounted for on the balance sheets of governments and local authorities.

These “Eurostat” rules currently classify such investments by default as government expenditure, despite the fact that projects are frequently being financed wholly or in part by the private sector – who also take the risk. The direct consequence is that such investments are counted towards public sector debt.

The rules are being questioned by Climate Alliance, a group that has over 1700 members from municipalities throughout Europe, and which stands for “a holistic approach to climate protection”.

It is criticising these rules as “a major disincentive to act because the investment appears on the government’s balance sheet”.

“In many European countries, the focus is on reducing public sector debt, so anything which appears to increase it, even though it does not in reality, is not going to happen,” Green member of the Linz municipal government in Austria Eva Schobesberger said.

Schobesberger is the city’s councillor for women, environment, nature conservation and education, and was top candidate of the Linz Greens for the municipal elections in 2015 and the first Green mayor candidate.

“We need to look again at whether the accounting rules are fit for purpose and deliver progress on the Stability Pact objectives, such as halting unnecessary public spending. Energy efficiency projects in our building stock are just about that,” she said.

The Eurostat Guidance Note for public authorities on the impact of energy performance contracts on government accounts was issued 7 August 2015 and says:

“As a practical rule, given the high likelihood that capital expenditure incurred in the context of EPCs would have to be recorded in government accounts anyway, Eurostat considers that all capital expenditure within EPCs should be treated, by default, as government expenditure through gross fixed capital information (or as intermediate consumption in the case of simple service procurement, as described above).”

The guidance does allow for the occasional exception:

“Whenever for some individual sizeable contract there would be a presumption that it could satisfy all conditions for being a PPP and at the same time be recorded off-government balance sheet, an analysis might be conducted by the National Statistical Institute of the country involved, in co-operation with Eurostat.”

A spokesman said the rules were under consideration for review, but this could take a very long time.

But how accurate are EPCs anyway?

There is also the question of how useful Energy Performance Certificates are. The latest statistics for the UK (and it should be noted that for public buildings Display Energy Certificates are used, which show the actual energy consumption of a building and are accompanied by reports which provide recommendations on potential energy saving measures similar to EPCs) show that 258,960 EPCs have been issued since the scheme began in 2008.

Only eight per cent of these buildings have a rating of A or B. Fifty-nine per cent are in the C and D bracket with the remaining in the E,F and G bracket. Seventy per cent of Display Energy Certificates and 66 per cent of Non-Domestic Energy Performance Certificated lodged across London have a rating of D or below. There is clearly much room for improvement.

Research has also shown that EPCs may not accurately reflect the actual energy use of buildings.

For example, research published by the Royal Institution of Charter Surveyors in 2012 suggested that “… in low labelled dwellings the energy use is less than expected, in the high labelled dwellings the energy use is somewhat higher than expected”.

Another 2012 report by Jones Lang LaSalle and the Better Buildings Partnership, based on a study of over 200 buildings, found that “…EPCs alone are not sufficient in delivering the Government’s decarbonisation targets nor are they capable of accurately portraying a building’s true energy efficiency”.

The British Association of Energy Conscious Builders, whose members are passionate about building energy efficiency, responded to a recent government consultation on EPCs by urging the government “to look not just at EPC ratings but also at the installed performance of efficiency improvements”.

It believes that just as there are warranties for boiler installations, so should there be for “the design, specification and installation of the full range of other energy efficiency interventions”. It cites as an example how the detailing of a solid wall insulation installation can affect the final heat loss through the walls by as much as 30 per cent.

This of course is all the more an argument for ICP’s protocols, which do just that in order to boost confidence in the final results. It is a reason not to rely on EPCs alone. But unless Eurostat rules are changed, the owners of public buildings are going to have to mount some pretty fierce financial arguments to make the case for much-needed energy efficient retrofits. Either that, or avoid reference to EPCs altogether.
David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement(with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds(Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life(Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings(Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry(Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology(Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

4 Ways to Plan Neighborhoods and Buildings to Minimize Energy Use

Conventional buildings consume much energy for heating and cooling to protect them from the temperature effects of climate and seasons. But some basic thought and planning, in combination with these 10 passive solar building design techniques, can help to radically reduce these energy costs. Here's 4 key ideas:

1. Optimize the spatial layout

 

Inappropriate (left) and appropriate (right) spatial layouts for settlements in hot climates. Grid layouts borrowed from other climates, and wide spacing of buildings, do not provide shade or wind shelter. Organic, non-grid layouts do provide shade and can be designed to block winds, preventing issues with wind funnelling. Credit: author.



Right: Sample layout for housing estate in higher latitudes such that each property has both privacy and an equator-facing aspect and roof to maximise potential use of solar energy. Grey circles are trees, grey lines are hedges (preferably) or fences. Credit: author.

2. Optimize the building form and layout

A low surface area to volume (S/V) ratio is optimal for a passive, low-carbon building. This is the ratio between the external surface area and the internal volume.

Compactness C = Volume / Surface Area

Size is also a factor: a small building with the same form as a larger one will have a higher S/V ratio. Buildings with the same U-values, air-change rates and orientations but differing S/V ratios and/or sizes may have significantly different heating demands. This has the following consequences:

• small, detached buildings should have a very compact form (square is close to the perfect optimum, the circle);
• larger buildings may have more complex geometries;
• high S/V ratios require more insulation to achieve the same U-/R-value.

In temperate zones, aim for an S/V ratio ≤ 0.7m²/m³.

Form factor

The ratio of the usable floor area, F, to above-grade enclosure area E is more useful, because it favours buildings that require less floor-to-floor height.

Form factor = F/E

The more compact the form, the higher the ratio, which is better. Large buildings (e.g., 172,800 ft² over 12 stories) have a much more efficient form than small buildings or large high-bay buildings for heating load (but not cooling, where the opposite is true).

This metric permits comparisons of the efficiency of the building form relative to the useful floor area. Achieving a heat loss form factor of ≤3 is a useful benchmark guide when designing small Passivhaus buildings. This also reduces the resources required and the cost. Most building uses do not require volume but floor area. This metric also does not include the ground contact area, but does include the roof.

A building with a more complex form is also likely to have a higher proportion of thermal bridges and increased shading factors that will have an additional impact on the annual energy balance.

The effect of form on total energy consumption for a given floor area is reduced as buildings increase in size. Besides permitting greater design flexibility, this lets designers use daylighting and natural ventilation cooling strategies also to reduce energ demand, as these require one dimension of the building to be relatively narrow (between 45 and 60ft (14–18m).

Example:

For a small office of 20,000 ft2 (1800 m2) a narrow two-storey form, ideal for natural ventilation and daylighting, may have a form factor ratio of 0.88, whereas a deep square plan have one of 1.02. For the former to have the same enclosure heat loss coefficient as the latter, its overall average enclosure R-value would need to be 1.02/0.88 = 16% higher. This would require a significant increase in the opaque wall area R-value, a reduction in window area, or a more expensive window.

 

An increase in the S/V ratio of 10% (the building in the middle) would require 20mm of insulation more than the good form on the left to achieve the same level of insulation. The one on the right (a 20% higher S/V ratio) would require an extra 40mm of insulation.



Optimum room layouts in dwellings according to the climate.

3. Adapt the dwelling forms and room layouts according to latitude

For latitudes above 25°: the sun-facing glazing area should be at least 50% greater than the sum of the glazing area on the east- and west-facing walls. Orientation is long on the east-west axis, which should be within 15 degrees of due east-west. At least 90% of the sun-facing glazing should be completely shaded (by awnings, overhangs, plantings) at solar noon on the summer solstice and unshaded at noon on the winter solstice. The room plan should – if it is a dwelling – incorporate the main living rooms on the equator-facing side, with utility rooms, less used rooms and garage if any on the north side. Morning rooms are typically bedrooms. On the side away from the equator windows should be kept to a minimum and as small as possible for lighting to minimise heat loss. This wall should also have high thermal mass or/and be externally insulated, to retain heat in the building.

For latitudes less than 25° or where topography significantly impacts insolation, the opposite should be the case. Bedrooms, for example, need light in the morning. The whole building needs to be protected from low angle heat.

Around 25° there is some leeway depending on local conditions. In these mid-latitudes different parts of a building may be used in the winter and summer, as equator-facing rooms become too hot and occupancy is switched in summer to rooms on the non-equator-facing side (not shown in the above left plan).

Table: The shape of the building has different requirements according to the local climate:

Climate	Elements and requirements	Purpose
Warm, humid	Minimise building depth	for ventilation
	Minimise west-facing wall	to reduce heat gain
	Maximise south and north walls	to reduce heat gain
	Maximise surface area	for night cooling
	Maximise window wall	for ventilation
Composite	Control building depth	for thermal capacity
	Minimise west wall	to reduce heat gain
	Limited equator-facing wall	for ventilation and some winter heating
	Medium area of window wall	for controlled ventilation
Hot, dry	Minimise equator-facing and west walls	to reduce heat gain
	Minimise surface area	to reduce heat gain and loss
	Maximise building depth	to increase thermal capacity
	Minimise window wall/window size	to control ventilation, heat gain and light
Mediterranean	minimise west wall	to reduce heat gain in summer
	Moderate area of equator-facing wall	to allow winter heat gain
	Moderate surface area	to control heat gain
	Small to moderate window size	to reduce heat gain but allow winter light
Cool temperate	Minimise surface area	to reduce heat loss
	Moderate area of pole-facing and west walls	to receive heat gain
	Minimise roof area	to reduce heat loss
	Large window wall	for heat gain and light
Equatorial upland	Maximise north and south walls	to reduce heat gain
	Maximise west-facing walls	to reduce heat gain
	Medium building depth	to increase thermal capacity
	Minimise surface area	to reduce heat loss and gain

4. Optimize the roof shape and orientation

In hot climate zones, vaulted roofs and domes dissipate more heat by natural convection than flat roofs. They give greater thermal stability and lower daytime temperature. The best orientation requires that the vault form receive maximum daily solar radiation in winter and minimum in summer.

A north-south axis orientation for a vaulted roof is better for winter heating, receiving the minimum direct solar radiation in the summer, while an east-west axis orientation will maximise summer heating, receiving the most irradiation in the morning and evening. The results are summarised by example for a 30° latitude site below.

Table: The effect of vault orientation on seasonal direct solar radiation.[i] CSR = Cross Section Ratio. This is the ratio between vertical height of the vault and the horizontal width.

Orientation	Season	Loss of direct solar radiation (%)
		CSR1 = 0.5	CSR1 = 0.8	CSR1 = 1	CSR1 = 1.25	CSR1 = 2
W-E	Summer	12.4	20.1	23.9	29	37.8
	Winter	9.8	17	19.6	23.2	30.4
N-S	Summer	17	28.6	35.1	42.1	56.4
	Winter	6.3	7.1	8	8.9	10.7
NE-SW	Summer	14.7	23.9	29.3	34.8	45.6
	Winter	8.9	13.4	16	18.8	24.1
NW-SE	Summer	14.7	23.9	29.3	34.8	45.6
	Winter	8.9	13.4	16	18.8	24.1

The effect of vault orientation on received seasonal direct solar radiation.

See this related post on passive solar building design techniques.

David Thorpe is the author of 

• Solar Technology: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Using Solar Energy for Heating, Cooling and Electricity 
• Energy Management in Buildings: The Earthscan Expert Guide
• The 'One Planet' Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development
• Sustainable Home Refurbishment: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency, and
• Energy Management in Industry: The Earthscan Expert Guide

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[i] Mashina, GA and Gadi, MB; Calculating direct solar radiation on vaulted roofs using a new computer technique, Nottingham University Conference Proceedings, 2010. Available at: http://www.engineering.nottingham.ac.uk/icccbe/proceedings/pdf/pf196.pdf

New body formed to drive energy efficiency in buildings

 Dr David Strong, chairman of the new Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings

The Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings has been set up to become the largest network of potential Green Deal providers, financiers, product and service suppliers in the UK.

It intends to become a hub of expertise to represent industry’s views on the practical implementation of Green Deal, ECO and wider energy efficiency opportunities in the UK, and has received the backing of a significant group of founding members, including npower, Strutt & Parker, Centrica, Kingfisher, Enact and Knauf Insulation.

It brings together more than 1,300 individuals from 760 organisations in voluntary cooperation across all parts of the energy efficiency supply chain.

It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Energy Foundation (NEF), which provides education and training, technical services, behavioural programs and community work to promote the uptake of energy efficiency measures and sustainable energy technologies.

The NEF is an independent educational charity based in Milton Keynes, and one of the longest established bodies of energy efficiency expertise in the UK.

The EEPB has already been asked by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to continue facilitating and coordinating the four Green Deal advisory forums.

These have the job of increasing the capacity of the Green Deal supply chain, setting up the installation, accreditation and qualification framework, promoting energy efficiency improvements across different building tenures, and developing a Green Deal advice framework for consumers.

The EEPB will also be helping to advise DECC on the implementation of the Government’s Microgeneration Strategy.

Dr David Strong, chairman of the EEPB, said: “The creation of the EEPB comes at a very significant time. Organisations across all parts of industry, all parts of the product and delivery sectors, and all parts of the private and public sector are seeking to collaborate and find answers to how we make the most of the new energy efficiency policies coming through from Government.”

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He said his priority was to look at "how we overcome market barriers and unlock opportunities from Green Deal and ECO, especially for SMEs".

He said they will be talking to all stakeholders to develop answers to these questions.

Michael Verity, Equity Partner at Strutt & Parker, said: "Most of the jigsaw pieces are available but putting them together is the major challenge."

Steven Heath, External Affairs Director for Knauf Insulation, said that the timing of its creation “has special relevance to the Green Deal," but said that their pursuit of answers will “no doubt throw up as many complexities in its delivery as in its conception. This is especially true of the nascent non-domestic sector".

However, he was optimistic. "The Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings will be well placed to identify these complexities, offer solutions and act as a conduit for concerns between the energy efficiency supply chain and Government.”

For RWE npower David Titterton, Domestic & Obligations Director, said his company was "backing the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings because it provides access to a network of real value".

The Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings will engage with all key Government departments involved in policy formulation and implementation, including:

• DECC which is responsible for energy and carbon policy, Green Deal, the Energy Company Obligation, microgeneration and fuel poverty (England)
• DCLG for building regulations, EPCs, planning and local authorities
• BIS for construction industry, skills and consumer protection
• Defra for product policy and standards
• in addition it will offer support to Treasury and the devolved Governments.

THE GREENEST INSULATION : A huge opportunity to reduce atmospheric carbon may be about to be lost

This is the most eco wall insulation: wood fibre board internal and external insulation with lime render. But it's the fossil fuel based polystyrene insulation that is getting the contracts.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity may about to be lost under the Green Deal to lock up a huge amount of atmospheric carbon in Britain's buildings to help combat climate change.

Later this year, the implementation of the Green Deal will kickstart the rollout of insulation of the nation's 29,000 homes.

Last Thursday's news, that the energy efficiency skills gap is being tackled with new funding to train installers and contractors in properly insulating properties throughout Britain up to the right standard, is to be welcomed.

But a huge question mark hangs over the choice of materials to be used for this job.

Not all insulation materials are equal; some are more environmentally sound than others.

There is a wide variety, ranging from the conventional; polystyrene and mineral wool; to the traditional and novel, such as sheep’s wool and hemp.

There is also a wave of new materials, derived from organic sources, by which I mean, ultimately, trees.

Principally these are woodfibre boards and batts, manufactured and sold in their most user-friendly form by companies such as Steico; and recycled cellulose, predominantly made and marketed by Excel Industries.

Any construction material derived from trees or other plants locks up in a building the carbon that it has absorbed from the atmosphere while growing, thereby helping to combat global warming.

It's a fantastic and cheap form of carbon sequestration.

By contrast, the current most commonly used insulation materials, such as phenolic foam board, expanded polystyrene boards and beads, and extruded polystyrene boards, are products of the petrochemical industry.

During their manufacture they emit carbon into the atmosphere, thereby increasing global warming.

Environmental impacts of insulation materials

The relative environmental impacts of insulation materials is a topic I examined thoroughly in chapter two of my standard textbook on the subject: Sustainable Home Refurbishment: the Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency.

Some people will tell you that recycled cellulose or wood fibre boards are more expensive. This is not necessarily so.

Last year I designed and built my own timber frame studio, which is super-insulated, and compared the cost of different insulation materials, from different suppliers. There is a huge variation, but I have to tell you that recycled cellulose made from old newsprint and treated against pests and fire is by far the cheapest.

It comes out at ￡12.49 per cubic metre when bought in 8 kg bags. Some “eco-" insulants are up to 25 times more expensive!

According to the most accurate figures available from the Carbon Trust, BSRIA and the University of Bath, in the Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE), expanded polystyrene has an embodied energy cost of at least 2.5kgCO2/kg.

Woodfibre board stores carbon at a quantity of 0.2 tonnes per cubic metre.

Doing a rough calculation, if one dwelling uses 20 cubic metres of this insulation, this represents a potential storage of 100 million tonnes of carbon throughout the country.

Is this significant? Yes. According to ICE's author, Craig Jones, the embodied carbon in buildings, taking account the projected future UK energy generation mix to 2050, is responsible for one third of their overall lifetime carbon cost.

Using organic insulation

Recycled newsprint works best when used in horizontal surfaces, like lofts; like most soft insulation it cannot be compressed, and must be covered up after installation if the space is to be used, because of the dust. Besides my loft I also used it underneath my floor.

It's the most environmentally sound insulation material you can possibly imagine. Apart from anything else, it is making use of a waste material.

The batts and boards made from wood fibre which I used are designed by the manufacturers for many different applications: between studs in walls, supporting concrete floors, or as tongue and groove cladding for the exterior insulation of a building.

The fibres for the latter are treated with wax to repel water, and when covered with a render (I used a very cheap proprietary lime render; all of this is part of the same complementary system) not only are weatherproof, but also allow the building structure to breathe.

This means that there is no condensation inside wet rooms and the building has an enhanced ability to withstand fluctuations in internal humidity.

By contrast, fossil fuel derived materials are not hygroscopic and do not allow the building to 'breathe'. Hence, when used for wall insulation, they can increase the risk of interior condensation.

There is one advantage which fossil fuel derived insulation has, and that is to achieve the same level of insulation using less depth of material. Typically you might need half the depth of phenolic or polystyrene foam than you would of wood fibreboard to achieve the same level of insulation.

This means that where space is a consideration, say to protect the internal dimensions of a room in internal wall insulation, or on the outside wall where the space beneath the eaves is limited for external wall insulation, then you would probably want to use, externally, mineral (rock & slag) wool batts and rolls such as Rockwool, which is relatively environmentally sound, certainly not as bad as foam. (Fibreglass mineral wool batts and rolls have a higher embodied energy than woodfibre.)

Lobbyists

Recently, Greg Barker said that his department had been inundated by lobbyists from insulation manufacturers wanting to get their products on the approved list for the Green Deal, which the Department is currently compiling.

My concern is that accredited installers are only going to be trained to install insulation containing fossil fuel derived insulation such as extruded polystyrene as manufactured by the likes of Kingspan and Knaupf, and a huge opportunity is going to be lost to save carbon.

I know these manufacturers have been lobbying furiously to make their products standard for the Green Deal, because if they are, it will be worth millions to them.

It's very important to bear in mind that each material has its own method of installation, and therefore a different skill needs to be learnt by installers.

Whatever has been learnt by the army of installers that, after this autumn, is likely to descend on the country's homes, will determine which insulation materials are used. Once installed, they will be there for decades.

Talking of long timescales, these foams also do not decompose at the end of their life, but instead will stay around for hundreds of years.

By contrast, surplus or used wood fibre board and cellulose composts to beautiful fertile soil within a year. So easy to dispose of! So environmentally sound. So easy to work with during construction.

Ignorance

In my experience there is almost complete ignorance of the organic materials I am talking about amongst your average builders, contractors and installers. Only the members of the Association of Environment Conscious Builders and their friends seem to be aware of them.

This is because they have only recently become available in this country in any quantity. Previously, they were quite hard to source.

I don't mind praising Burdens, under the brand EcoMerchant for being the only mass market supplier to stock thee fantastic materials, as far as I know.

So there is a massive skills and awareness gap to fill.

Preferentially specifying the use of these materials on a large scale will stimulate the supply chain, create demand and bring the price down even more.

The use of these materials is also recommended by the Centre for Alternative Technology and the related campaign Zero Carbon Britain, which last year consulted the industry on which materials to advocate.

CITB-ConstructionSkills, which is delivering the training, says it will do so "to evidence competence against the Minimum Technical Competence as specified by PAS 2030 and the Competent Persons Scheme Operators for the specific annexes covered by this initiative".

When I asked them about this, they said “CITB-ConstructionSkills has no remit or authority to prescribe what materials are accredited for the Green Deal.

"It is the organisations that are applying to be certification bodies of products acceptable to the Green Deal who will make the choice. At present we are not aware of which organisations or standards will be used."

Of course, it is up to the suppliers and manufacturers of these materials to lobby for their products and standards.

I sincerely hope they have the budget and the lobbyists available to compete with the insulation giants who currently dominate the building energy efficiency sector.

I've asked them, but so far received no reply.

Wales' new solar, heat pump, building tech centre

A £6.5 million project to investigate and produce the next generation of low carbon whole building solutions has been opened in north Wales.

The Sustainable Building Envelope Centre (SBEC) at Shotton, Deeside, is a partnership between the Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI), Tata Steel and the Welsh Assembly Government which over three years will research and monitor solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies and their use together.

Various combinations of technologies will be evaluated, and the solutions arrived at will be relevant not only for new-build, but also for retrofit of large public, industrial or office structures.


The SBEC's director, structural engineer Daniel Pillai, says that the focus on the building envelope (external and internal roofs and walls) is important because it has the potential to play a far more proactive role during a building's life, and provide sources of renewable energy.

"Naturally," he says, "since one partner is Tata Steel, the solution will involve this material, but this focus is far from exclusive. We are looking at a variety of ways in which the envelope can capture, store and release energy."

Transpired solar collectors

Tata bought Corus Steel in 2010. One of the products Corus had developed and which the SBEC is researching is a transpired solar collector (TSC). This involves an equator-facing wall clad with steel that is coated with special solar absorbing paint. The cladding, mounted a few inches from the wall, is perforated with thousands of tiny holes.

The sun heats up the metal, and fans at the top of the gap draw up the heated air into a Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system with heat recovery. Ducting transmits the heated air around the building.

"The building has four environmental chambers," Pillai explains, "with which we can experiment with different combinations using the TSCs. One is a workshop, where the system includes fan driven air heaters, and we expect the TSCs to contribute about half of the heating requirement, supplementing gas blowers.

"The upper floors and ceilings are made of concrete mixed with a powder called Micronal. Made by BASF, these are tiny capsules containing wax, a phase change material, which melts at 23o, absorbing surplus heat from the room," Pillai continues. "At night when the room cools, the wax solidifies and releases the heat, stabilising the internal temperature."

A new take on air source heat pumps

"The other three chambers are office areas, with variations on a theme," he adds. "Air source heat pumps will boost the pre-heated air from the TSCs and send it to underfloor heating. They can also work backwards in the summer to cool the building."

Air source heat pumps have come under some criticism lately for not being sufficiently efficient to warrant use. But the SBEC hopes that using solar pre-heated air will improve their performance, and will be checking this.

Later in the project they will be investigating other means of cooling buildings, perhaps using solar thermal heat engines to drive adsorption chillers.

Pillai says that the building will undergo blower tests in a couple of weeks to test their airtightness, which he hopes will be under 3m2/hr, but they are not aiming for the Passivhaus standard, which is one third of that level.

Embodied carbon

The insulation around the building includes polystyrene and mineral wool, the former of which has high embodied energy. I asked him whether the project will examine the embodied carbon in the materials and products used. Pillai responded positively.

"Absolutely. This is one of the unknowns in the field at the moment, and can be quite controversial. So we hope to work with as many people as possible to get reliable figures on how much energy is used to make the products, so we can choose the most efficient."

Steel is usually associated with high embodied energy, but Pillai counters that because much steel is recycled this need not be so.

Pillai said the collaborative approach extends to all the SBEC's work and invites potential partners. "We want to work with industry and customers to find the best solutions that are easy to install," he said.

SBEC has been designed by the Design Research Unit of the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA).

The Low Carbon Research Institute, housed in the building, is a team of 18 people drawn from Tata Steel, LCRI, Welsh School of Architecture and other industry specialists, partly funded by the Higher Education Funding Council For Wales (HEFCW) and £34m from the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO).

Their work includes developing pre-finished steel products that deliver efficient energy functionality, and turning them into roof and wall components that will work on all building types. They're also R&D-ing PV, marine, hydrogen and other low carbon technologies.

Dye-sensitised PV

An additional and connected centre, the PV Accelerator Centre is developing a photovoltaic pre-finished steel product and its manufacturing process. It is using the next generation of dye-sensitised PV technology, which works on a principle similar to photosynthesis in plants.

This product performs well in all light conditions and will hopefully make solar electricity much cheaper and easier to use. This £11m project has operated jointly with Australian company Dyesol, funded by £5m from the Welsh Assembly Government.