Feed in Tariffs

Phew, a busy few weeks, but am glad to be back in blogland again.

Feed in Tariffs (or FITS) what are they and what have they to do with energy efficiency ?

In simple terms, they are incentive payments from the government for people who generate their own electricity, so if you have photovoltaics or solar panels installed you should be eligible for these payments. The change since April this year, is that you now get these payments even if you use the electiricity yourself.

So, you save money by not using power supplied by the National Grid, you can even make money if you have surplus power, by selling back to the National Grid. You make money because you receive the FITS payment for being a micro power generator, which is index linked for the next 20+ years.

What's the downside? The capital outlay for whatever form of micro generation you are installing, as well as the aesthetic impact on your property of these installations.

Want to find out more? I could say look at the national press for adverts from green energy providers, undoubtedly they will be delighted to give you lots of information, but ultimately they are trying to sell you their solution so may not be the best place to start. The Energy Saving trust website is usually packed with all sorts of information that will help your research - so why not start there.

If you get to the point where you are serious, don't forget your local planning office. Regulations are much more straightforward now, so they should be pleased to help.

So what's the final word? If you are interested in green energy, the incentives have never been better, but you still need to assess that it is an investment you want to make because the initial outlay can be expensive. even if you typically could save/earn £700+ per annum from your installation that is probably at least a 10 year payback on your investment.

Heat Rises

In one of my recent missives, I was talking about natural convection and heat rising through a house.

This prompted a question asking whether removing loft insulation in summer was a good idea?

I think this is probably very impractical for 99% of houses, but it did get me thinking. I was in fact up in the loft space the other day and even though(as you might expect) I have a well insulated loft ther heat in the roof space was still quite high. This can be caused by two things, the obvious one is that heat is being convected into the roof space by sunlight coming on to the roof, here the insulation in the floor of the loft will act as a barrier and stop this heat going down into the house. Otherwise natural convection in the house means that through the day, heat will still find a way to rise through gaps around loft hatches and the like.

If we believe that hot air will rise and you do want to do something about this, then perhaps another alternative is to install a couple of Velux style windows in your loft. Opening these during the day, particularly later in the day, when heat has built up, would allow the heat to dissipate.

In economic terms it is probably hard to justify this investment, unless you do want daylight in your loft space, but as a theoretical muse it is worth a thought.

As a practicing energy consultant, it behoves me to have these lateral thoughts from time to time - now, how can I find an energy efficient way of dispelling heat from my greenhouse?????

Low energy bulbs

Very interesting article in the national press today, saying that prices for low energy bulbs are going to jump at the end of the year. Why? because the subsidies that the big utility companies have been getting and passing on to the large retail outlets is going to stop.

The article went on to say that priority should / will be given to subsidising insulation solutions as this is seen as the most effective short term solution to reduce energy costs in running your home.

Based on my experience as a practicing Energy assessor, I would say that most people do think in terms of out of sight out of mind as far as loft space is concerned. A little extra lagging here can make a big difference, so the strategy is probably right. Low-E bulbs are now accepted as here to stay, so don't need the same 'push' to get them going and improving loft or wall insulation will produce better results than blanket use of low-e bulbs anyway.

However..... Forewarned is forearmed, buy a few low-e bulbs before Christmas, it gives you a couple of spares and you get them before the price hike.

It's getting hot

Phew! Down here in the South it's getting hot, which can make for uncomfortable conditions, both indoors and out.

You can't really influence outdoor conditions very much, but before you run for the cooling fans indoors, here's a couple of things to think about.

Unless you have the luxury of full aircon, everything else is about creating the illusion of cooling and that means movement of air. A fan is just moving air about, but that movement makes you feel a little bit cooler.

Fans today are very low powered, so you don't have to pay too much to achieve a little comfort, however it is still using power, so are there alternatives?

I recently attended a seminar, where they talked about natural ventilation, this is air movement along a corridor, so if you create that corridor, you will get some air movement and achieve the fan effect for free. Ideally you will have a room with a double aspect, open windows at both ends and, depending on prevailing weather you will get an air pull through the room.

Convection (hot air rising) can also help this effect. especially in the evening, when the outdoor temperature begins to cool, open ground floor windows, leave internal doors open and upstairs windows open, this should allow the hot air, built up in the building through the day to gradually escape through the upstairs, sucking cooler air into the lower floor.

I saw this in America many years ago, where they had something called an 'attic fan' installed. This was a large propeller like device, installed in the roofspace and vented to outside through the gable end of the house. all doors had air gaps deliberately left to allow air movement and downstairs windows were fitted with trickle vents. when the fan was on it pushed out the hotter air, creating a vacuum to suck cooler outside air into the house - quite effective too.

I wouldn't go as far as such an installation, but letting the air move about can make a big difference to the comfort inside the house - and it doesn't cost you anything, so open up the internal space and allow the house to breathe.

EPC Results

Seems like the housing market is beginning to move a little again, so I have been out and about assessing some properties. It's worth pointing out a couple, just to highlight some things.

Let's think about a relatively new flat, in a purpose built block. Good double glazing, flat's abouve and below. Not much room to do anything here, recent building regulations will mean that the structure of the block is well insulated already. As expected this returns a good rating of Band C, with some option to move up to Band B, by uprating the CH boiler - probably not worth it until the boiler needs changing.

The second property is an older chalet bungalow, where the owner is passionate about energy saving - very refreshing - here there is plenty scope, increase loft insulation, upgrade to double glazing, possibly cavity wall insulation (although this should always be subject to a full survey to ensure no likely problems with damp). But if this property is up for sale, why would / should the current owner make that investment?

That's the conundrum. I don't believe a significant number of buyers are reading IN DETAIL the EPC reports provided by the seller, they may see the graphs in the estate agent's particulars, but won't dig deeper. If there is a big gap between the two sets of arrows on the graph, then that means there is big potential to improve things, and if you are a buyer, looking at this content MIGHT give you leverage in your negotiations.

My professional responsibility is to the seller of the property, they pay the bills, but the people who stand to gain most from my survey are the potential buyer. So any buyers out there, if you need help to interpret an EPC report or want some advice on it's content, please get in touch, I'd be delighted to offer some consultancy to help - the great thing about the EPC report is that it is very formulaic, so even if I don't produce a specific report, it's very easy for me to interpret any report.

With the recent demise of HIPs, of course more change to get more buyer engagement in the EPC process is highly unlikely in the near future. I guess I'm just happy to see a bit of movement in the market again.

Surrey Energy Consultants is a small independant consultancy working in Surrey and SW London, if you think we can help, please give us a call.

Ground Source Heat Pumps

Read an interesting article about Ground Source heat pumps the other day which got me thinking....

The basic premise of a ground source heat pump is that the below surface temperature in the earth is fairly constant, and by tapping into this you can use the ambient heat to heat domestic water for your home heating system (or conversly, use it as a cooler in the summer months). I won't go into the mechanics of it all, but at least in terms of carbon footprint it could be a partial solution for a lot of homes.

I guess people are put off the concept by the thought of large tranches of their gardens being dug up, which is fair enough - although one could argue that green stuff grows back pretty quickly - probably one for consideration if you were about to undergo a bit of serious landscaping.

Anyway, if we take this thought process laterally, then there are other areas where we are maybe missing a trick. As summer approaches we are closing in onto the major music festival season too. In places where there are effectively permanent showgrounds or even fields that need complete attention after each festival event, why don't the organisers think about burying the pipework for ground source heating. All the other componenture can be brought in as mobile equipment, hook it up, flush the pipework and you have on-site eco friendly warm water for all manner of uses on site.

Same logic could apply to camp sites or caravan parks. bury the pipework in the off season, and you have ready made eco-heating ahead of the next season.

If more organisers started to think laterally and go the extra mile, then it would make a difference to UK reaching it's carbon targets in 2016.

Now, I'm off into London this afternoon, so maybe transport is the next area for a bit of rumination.....

WOOD you believe it

Our local sawmill (Norbury Wood products - www.norburywood.org.uk) had it's annual open day last weekend, so I went along to see what they were up to. This is a spin-off from Surrey Council, now part of Surrey Wildlife Trust, that is sustainably managing some local woodland and working as a small cash generator for the charity by producing high quality signage and garden furniture, lot's of information on their website, so I won't dwell on it here.

However, from an energy / efficiency point of view it is a well thought out setup.

The nature of their business, where they are processing raw felled trees into meaningful product means that there is a lot of wood wastage on site,but they deal with this intelligently.

They are working with a local woodsman who produces charcoal, so some of the waste naturally services his requirements for raw material to go into his charcoal burners - waste from one business becomes raw material for another.

The other, more interesting aspect of what they do is to use a lot of their wastage to fuel a wood burning boiler which services the kilns they use to treat and dry green timber before manufacturing from it. Naturally, green timber would need to sit for a number of years before it was dry enough to work as processed wood for furniture & the like, so to speed up this process to a number of months, the sawmill stores the wood they want to work in kilns, fed by this boiler, which accelerate the drying time. Again an example of their business gaining from intelligent usage of their waste product. The running costs for these kilns must be close to Nil, and compared to waste removal costs are certainly more carbon friendly.

They also process their sawdust wastage, which is used as bedding by a local farmer for his livestock.

So apart from being an interesting day seeing all the big machinery at work, it's nice to see a business thinking through it's processes to be as eco friendly as is reasonable. Very good.