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Software developed by BRE for DEAs and GDAs

2013-05-17 10:09:44

BRE has created the first modules of a suite of software to help Domestic Energy Assessors (DEA) and Green Deal Advisors (GDA).

The core of the software is made up of three modules, said to have been developed in response to calls for a more efficient and connected way to assess energy and also better understand green deal potential.

Nick Withey, DEA South Wales said: â€œI have just run my first EPC through the new BRE software. The program is very user friendly and quickly guides the user through the data inputs in a simple and logical step by step process.

â€œThe software also contains an impressive management tool for the logging and tracking of EPCs, which will definitely save me time in the management of my instructions.â€

One of the modules is a pre-assessment tool, to provide a new method for conducting green deal pre-assessment which is designed to reduce risk and allows companies to increase their effectiveness, save time and money.

Users are guided via instructions and illustrations through a brief set of questions to capture and understand Green Deal potential. Assessors can then use the information to help identify the homes with the best opportunities for success.

The other two elements deal with existing dwellings EPCs and occupancy assessment (OA) and will expand BRE Globalâ€™s automation support for their DEA and GDA members. Both are available free of charge to appropriately licensed BRE Global DEAâ€™s and GDAâ€™s.

Both modules contain a single login process and visual guides to help clearly identify next steps to draw up a simple EPC summary which identifies potential savings.

The suite of software will also be expanded in June to include an ECO calculator module and GDA iPad app.

The five-week classroom

2013-05-16 11:32:43

Meadowside CP School in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, has a new classroom, built in just five weeks using Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs). The school needed to increase the capacity of its classrooms to meet the demand for places created by the credit crunch baby-boom, without disrupting term-time activities.

SipBuild UK managing director Chris Duckworth says: â€œThis was an ideal project for SIPs and the results have been amazing. We were on site within five weeks and built an entirely new classroom within five days. This allowed other contractors to get on site and complete the roofing, rendering, wiring and plumbing without disrupting the school calendar.

â€œExtensions to existing buildings, to provide integral cloakroom and toilet facilities for each year were completed over a further four build periods as the classrooms became available around the school holidays.

â€œSIPs are a great way to increase classroom capacity quickly while ensuring a quality-build and reducing heating bills.â€

Are you wasting money on lighting?

2013-05-16 10:23:04

A survey has revealed that 85% of companies waste cash on unnecessary lighting.

The research, carried out by Ex-Or, focused on the lighting habits in commercial offices and warehouses and the results found that, on average, lighting is left on in the workplace for up to 12 hours a day unnecessarily â€“ including in storerooms and warehouses. And 17% of those polled said their office lighting is sometimes left on for up to 24 hours a day, with 44% indicating that up to five unoccupied rooms at their workplace are left lit for significant portions of the day and nearly one in five admitted more than 20 rooms are lit unnecessarily.

Statistics published by DECC in 2011 show that, across a broad selection of non-domestic applications, lighting represents, an average of 21% of a buildingâ€™s total energy consumption.

RHI: the facts

2013-05-15 14:23:50

Alastair Murray gives an overview of the Renewable Heat Incentive.

The majority of people in the UK construction industry have heard of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). Architects and consultants appear to have got to grips with the general concepts and have an idea of the tariffs for each technology.

For those of you that donâ€™t already know, the RHI is a government incentive which pays the owner of eligible renewable installation (heat pump, biomass or solar thermal) over time for the heat that is produced. The RHI is run by Ofgem who manage the application process and also make the payments (from a pool of funds allocated by the treasury).

It was introduced in order to increase the number of renewable heat installations in the UK and so help the country to achieve its carbon reduction target for 2020.

You are probably aware of the RHIâ€™s predecessor, the Feed-in Tariff (FIT), which incentivised the installation of renewable power generation in the UK. The scheme has been a huge success and resulted in over 260,000 installations of solar PV. However, the success of the scheme gave the newly elected coalition a fright when they realised that there were no safeguards in place to monitor and adjust the payments as the cost of solar PV installations fell. This meant that the scheme had become too generous and was not providing good value for money.

In an effort to tackle the problem the government announced huge cuts to the tariffs. In November 2011, when the tariffs cuts were announced, the tariff for a typical 4kWp solar PV installation was 43.3p p/kWh; by August 2012 this had been cut to 15.44p p/kWh- a fall of almost 65% in less than a year.

All this was extremely damaging to the growing renewable power industry and damaged confidence in the scheme. The industry was in uproar and the fiasco enjoyed widespread coverage in the UK mainstream media.

Unfortunately, November 2011 was also the month that Phase one (non-domestic) of the Renewable Heat Incentive started operating. The opening became an almost inaudible whimper against the battle that was raging over the FIT cuts. It has been 16 months since the first RHI application was submitted and it is still struggling to achieve the uptake that was hoped for. The government started a consultation in September 2012 to investigate the reasons for the lower than expected uptake and have devised a plan to boost the scheme. This plan has been explained in two updates which have been released in the last two months.

The first was released on 27th February. The updates to the non-domestic RHI include:

1. To ensure that the scheme is financially sustainable and operates within the allocated budgets until 2020 (and to avoid a similar situation as the FIT debacleâ€¦) the government has set â€˜triggersâ€™ for uptake. If the uptake of one renewable heat technology reaches this trigger point the tariff will likely be cut to reduce uptake.

2. Technologies which are lagging behind eg. heat pumps are likely to have their tariffs increased (this has been confirmed in the second press release). Installations accredited from 21st January 2013 will benefit from the increase once the new tariffs come in to force.

3. Sustainability requirements will be introduced for all existing and new installations using solid biomass as a feedstock.

4. Air quality requirements will form part of the RHI for all solid biomass installations including CHP installations which burn biomass and this will apply to all new installations only.

5. Metering requirements will be simplified to reflect feedback received from participants and to reduce burdens on industry.

In relation to the second point, the second update that the government released contained a table showing their plans for the RHI tariffs for the various technologies. There are a number of changes, most notable is the confirmed increase to the tariff for ground source heat pumps and the intention to extend the RHI to cover additional renewable technologies. Most important of these is the plan to include air source heat pumps which are already one of the most popular options for renewable heating.

The February announcement reaffirmed the governmentâ€™s intention to open the RHI to individual domestic households in summer 2013. This makes it all the more strange when, less than a month later, they release their second announcement and very quietly mention at the bottom of the page that the opening of the RHI for domestic properties has been pushed back to spring 2014.

With this in mind they have extended the Renewable Heat Premium Payment scheme until the end of March 2014. This scheme, first launched in July 2011, offers money off the cost of renewable heating installations such as heat pumps and solar thermal and is largely targeted at households which are off the gas grid. The scheme had been due to close in March 2013.

Nevertheless, the key proposals announced in the first update included:

â€¢ Indicative tariff ranges for air source heat pumps (6.9-11.5p/kWh), biomass boilers (5.2-8.7p/kWh), ground source heat pumps (12.5-17.3p/kWh) and solar thermal technologies (17.3p/kWh) that are MCS certified and meet relevant required standards, including specific emission limits for biomass systems.

â€¢ Payments for householders over seven years for each kWh of heat produced for the expected lifetime of the renewable technology and based on deemed heat usage.

â€¢ Tariff levels set to provide a better return for householders living off the gas grid.

â€¢ Minimum energy efficiency requirements based on Green Deal assessments.

In addition to the above, the second update also contained some specific measures targeted at the renewable heating industry including:

â€¢ A Â£9m package to help local authorities get heat network schemes up and running in towns and cities across the country, with a new Heat Networks Delivery Unit to sit within the DECC providing expert advice.

â€¢ Â£1m for the cities of Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield and Nottingham to help them develop heat networks

â€¢ 100 green apprenticeships to be funded primarily for young people in small scale renewable technologies

â€¢ Up to Â£250,000 for a new first come first served voucher scheme for heating installers to get money off the cost of renewable heating kit installation training, with up to Â£500 or 75% of the cost of the training course per person

â€¢ Working with individual industrial sectors to design long term pathways to cut carbon across UK industry

Alastair Murray is from The Renewable Design Company.

Greg Barker attends Greenbuild Expo

2013-05-15 11:29:48

Energy and climate change minister Greg Barker visited Greenbuild Expo last week. After a meeting with Greater Manchester's Green Deal team, Barker took a tour of the event's Green Deal and ECO exhibitors, discussing the coalition's flagship green policy with Elite Network, SIG and Plumb Center. He also talked to the University of Salford about low-carbon product innovation.

His visit took place on the second day of the event, which took place at Manchester Central on 8th and 9th May, with seminar content covering all aspects of sustainable building and refurbishment.

The future's bright

2013-05-15 11:11:06

The first results are in for the Retrofit for the Future programme and show a promising start, says Lucy Young.

Achieving an 80% reduction in the in-use CO2 emissions of a property is an ambitious target. And this was exactly the goal of projects taking part in the Retrofit for the Future programme. Set up by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) in 2009, Retrofit for the Future provided funding to refurbish over 100 homes across the UK, with the aim of discovering what it will take to seriously reduce the carbon emissions of our existing housing stock.

The properties were mainly two-storey homes, with a couple of bungalows included too, and all of the homes had two or more bedrooms. After the refurbishment work was carried out, the performance of each property was closely monitored for two years, and TSB has published a report examining the results of a third of the retrofits and what they mean for our carbon reduction strategies and refurbishment programmes. The data will allow identification of the successful energy-saving measures, as well as providing insight into resident comfort and how industry can overcome specific challenges.

The TSB analysed the data from 37 properties and found that three achieved the desired 80% reduction in CO2 emissions, with 23 reaching between 50% and 80%. TSBâ€™s Paul Ruyssevelt explains: â€œOut of the 100 properties in the Retrofit for the Future programme, we were able to analyse the carbon emission performance of 37: those that had a full year's monitoring data. There will be an update of our analysis later this year with up to 20 additional properties. We are very pleased that three properties exceeded the target of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions, and that the majority achieved a 50% to 80% reduction. The three that exceeded the 80% target all had a good level of airtightness and the management of the projects was of a very high standard.â€

The key result, aside from the reduction in carbon emissions that followed a retrofit project, was that residents living in retrofitted houses are more able to afford to keep their homes at a comfortable temperature. This is particularly important at a time when the UK has been named the worst place for fuel poverty in Europe, with an estimated 5m families living in fuel poverty, according to figures from the Association for the Conservation for Energy and the Energy Bill Revolution campaign. And this is largely down to our poorly insulated homes, as our energy prices are not higher than those in Europe. When you consider that one of the retrofitted houses now has gas and electricity costs of Â£374 per year, successful low-carbon refurb becomes incredibly attractive.

So, what makes for a successful retrofit project? The TSBâ€™s report says that working closely with the property owner or tenant is crucial, ensuring they are engaged from the start and throughout the work being carried out. Training should then be provided, so that the resident understands how any new technology works, such as heating controls, and how to maximise the return from any renewable energy sources. Training for support staff is also necessary â€“ so that residents can call up for help.

Back at the planning stage, research should begin early â€“ TSB recommends looking for suitable products and suppliers as soon as possible, so that a collaborative environment can be created, and potential issues with product availability and lead times can be overcome. Also at the planning stage, a detailed contingency plan should be drawn up in case there are unforeseen challenges in the course of the project. The order that work will be carried out should be carefully sequenced, so that any cost savings can be maximised and disruption minimised. Communication plays a vital role once on site, between the project team members and also with the residents. Site staff should be briefed on the importance of achieving good airtightness.

The report certainly didnâ€™t say that we have an easy task ahead of us, but does show that, with careful planning and attention to detail, the industry can achieve some pretty impressive reductions in carbon emissions and energy bills.

Further information

The Technology Strategy Board has made the full data set from Retrofit for the Future available through a database called â€˜embedâ€™, which can be accessed via www.retrofitanalysis.org.

This article appeared in the May/June 2013 issue of Greenbuild magazine