Sunday 9 September 2007

Village hall to be one of greenest in Britain

A village hall is to become one of the greenest in the country by being powered by three forms of renewable energy technology.

Beechwood Hall, in Cooksbridge, will be virtually carbon neutral, powered by heat and light generated by the sun, along with the wind and geothermal energy.

A solar panel on the south-facing roof will provide hot water and a 45ft wind turbine will run a ground source heat pump, which uses heat from the sun trapped 15ft below ground, to provide underfloor heating in the hall.

The renewable technology will generate 26,000kWh of electricity each year, saving the emission of more than 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Funding for the renewable energy project came from the EDF Energy Green Fund, which provided £20,000, and the Government's Low Carbon Buildings Programme, which handed over £18,700.

The new village hall was built on the site of an old sports pavilion on land left to the parish in 1944 by the Shrivener family. It has been clad in local chestnut timber and insulated with local sheep wool.

EDF Energy's support was part of a £213,000 new village hall project backed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, waste disposal companies Biffaward and Viridor and the local community.

Peter Mitchell, the chairman of trustees for the village hall project, said: "We wanted to support new renewable forms of energy. It is sending an important message to everybody about where our priorities lie.

"I think the locals will be surprised when they see the hall because their memories are of a gloomy cricket pavilion and it has been completely rebuilt.

"It has been transformed into a building which is light and airy and enjoys beautiful views over the South Downs."

full article

Saturday 8 September 2007

Fly kites for renewable energy

A new way to harness wind energy may take off now that computers have learned to kite surf.

Experienced kite surfers know that on a calm day they can maximise the power they draw from the breeze by flying their aerofoil-shaped kites through the air in a figure of eight.

"The amount of energy you get from the figure of eight is massive, easily 10 times what you get from just parking the kite downwind," says Allister Furey, a roboticist and avid kite surfer at the University of Sussex in the UK.

Researchers have been trying to use high-flying kites tethered to turbines to generate electricity: when the kites tug on the lines this turns the turbine. While the idea works well when the wind blows consistently, the computers controlling the kites run into trouble when there are gusts of wind or lulls, often leading to crashes.

full article

The green shoots of hi-tech success

Environmental technologies have become big business.

Having blazed its way to the top of the political agenda, the environment is now a hot topic in company boardrooms around the globe.

Firms, keen to extol the green virtues of their products over rivals' goods, are investing serious money in an effort to clean up their acts.

Research by the Energy Saving Trust showed that the average home had up to 12 devices charging or on standby at any one time.

It was the sheer number of devices left on when not being used that triggered the idea behind Bye Bye Standby, a system that allows people to switch off all their equipment by pressing just one button.

Darryl Mattocks, managing director of Domia, described his eureka moment for his device.

"I was leaving my house early one morning, and you could just see there little red lights everywhere," he recalled, "and when I arrived in the office, again there were little red dots all over the place."

The system has two main components: "smart sockets" and a remote control.

"You plug a smart socket into the wall socket and then you plug your device into the smart socket," Mr Mattocks explained.

"When you go to bed, you press a button on the remote control and everything switches off. Likewise, in the morning you press the button and everything switches back on."

But why don't people just switch off or unplug things when they have finished using them?

"At the end of the day, there is an off switch on the socket and there is no reason why you cannot press that but, in reality, the socket is often in an inconvenient place - such as behind furniture."

Because the system uses radio frequencies to allow the remote control to communicate with the smart sockets, it needs to draw a small current itself in order to work.

But Mr Mattocks said: "We have got consultants to actually go through a typical lifestyle and usage and the small amount of power the unit consumes is far outweighed by the savings you make."

He says the system would help a typical household cut its electricity bill by £38 each year and save the equivalent of 166kg of carbon dioxide emissions.

full article

Thursday 30 August 2007

20 ways to go green at home

You don't have to live in the latest concept house to help save the planet. Donnachadh McCarthy has transformed his leaky, draughty Victorian terrace into a zero-carbon triumph – and he's set out this simple plan so that you can do it too.

20. Power to the people

The biggest investment in the creation of my retro-eco home was installing a solar panel for electricity (a solar photovoltaic system). That was way back in 1997. As I have learnt to be more efficient in how I use electricity, it has provided an increasing proportion of my power.

A few years back, I finally succeeded in exporting more electricity to the National Grid than I imported, which was a cause for much celebration. Today, a similar 2KwH solar system will cost about £12,000, and the government grant (which was slashed in Gordon Brown's last Budget) now stands at £1,500 per system.

By the way, the domestic wind turbine experimentally installed on my roof 18 months ago has been a failure, producing just enough power for one energy saving bulb.

For advice visit www.lowcarbonbuildings.org

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