Howard Johns, founder of One Zero, outlines their home energy transformation service which includes topping up insulation and adding solar PV, battery storage and a heat pump.
Interview with Howard Johns
Howard shares his extensive knowledge of renewable energy, and how he has moved from managing a large portfolio of solar and wind farms to enabling people to generate their own energy. Over the years it has become apparent to Howard that the real sticking point with the large scale projects is the National Grid, which is currently struggling to take new connections. His new company One Zero energy, is focusing on how we retrofit homes in an efficient and light way that can enable them to become part of a new, flexible, distributed grid.
The UK grid is no longer fit for purpose
Electricity companies began as regional entities, with one power station supplying each local area, which worked until there was a problem with that station or too much demand. With no back up in the system, some areas of supply would have to be shut down to enable other areas to keep going. Our current grid system was a national project to join all these power stations together with transmission lines so that it had more inherent flexibility. But essentially, it was built as a one-way system, with power being generated in a small number of locations and then flowing to a large number of supply locations.
With the advent of renewables, particularly wind and solar, distributed generation emerged. So generation is happening in all sorts of locations and Howard explains how we are rewiring the grid backwards to allow this, which has caused a lot of issues. In fact, in many areas it is just not possible to connect any more large-scale renewable generation because the infrastructure cannot take it. If we can’t do that and need energy transformation now to tackle climate change we need to look at other options.
The current energy system is extremely inefficient
Howard explains that for every 100 units of gas used only 40 of those turn into useful units of electricity. During transmission to our homes another 10% is lost and then we might lose more through inefficient appliances. The usable energy you’re getting in your home from that primary energy is around 30%. So if you start to generate energy where you need it you can massively reduce the wastage.
With heat pumps we can be getting 400% more energy out of it than we put in, compared to maybe 90% efficiency with a gas boiler. It is similar with transport, a standard fossil fuel car is about 30% efficient, whereas you can double or treble the efficiency for an electric vehicle. In other words the new electric based technologies that are emerging are the future.
A resilient energy system has more back-up options
Howard outlines how we already have at least five interconnectors into this country to build resilience in the system. A European wide grid allows excess energy, say from Denmark, to be supplied to other European countries.
Behind the scenes at the National Grid (NESO) people are looking at live demand, and turning on things like peaker plants and gas plants, and using batteries in some cases to meet that demand.
A resilient system must get past intermittency
As the amount of renewable generation increases, there’s a new challenge – intermittency. So there will be a correlation between the weather conditions and how much is generated. For example, on a sunny day we might generate 20% of our power from solar, but there will be nothing at night. At times we will get really high levels of grid energy powered by the wind, but on a still day, we may get very little. This is one of the key features of the new system and it is causing problems.
Better storage capacity will help solve the problem
As the cost of energy continually changes if we have the access to battery storage then we can benefit. So it makes sense to use energy at key moments, when it’s abundant and cheap, and avoid using it at six o’clock in the evening when the demand is highest and it’s expensive.
It’s always preferable to use energy as it’s being generated
Howard tells us that it is preferable to use energy as it’s being generated because there will always be losses associated with storage. With batteries you lose around 10% of the energy you put in, just in charging and discharging. However if you haven’t got demand for that power, it’s still a sensible thing to do.
Part of One Zero’s strategy is to install a solar PV array in combination with battery storage. This would mean that for eight months of the year you could be virtually self-sufficient for power. With a decent control system you can effectively run your battery as a micro power station profiting from arbitrage and engaging in the flexibility markets.
Import and export to the grid when it makes financial sense
With many big batteries being built across the UK there may be times when power is cheap or even free! So, in addition to your own generation, in these moments it may make financial sense to import from the grid to charge your home battery or discharge power back to the grid.
Innovative companies, like Octopus and Ovo, already have flexible tariffs that will give you different power prices at different times of day.
Howard thinks the next step would be managed services that take into account wholesale prices, which change every half an hour. Again these have periods where energy is very cheap or even negative, and other times when it’s expensive. With an agile tariff you could see prices change from -2p to 50p a kilowatt hour over a 24-hour period. Software is needed for this management, however, and this is a service that One Zero are working on.
“Generating and storing power at your home is probably the most cost effective way of getting power right now. Not many people realise that.”
Heat pumps will work without a deep retrofit
Using heat pumps is another part of the One Zero energy transformation strategy. People may be under the impression that a deep retrofit – improving the thermal performance, and the health and comfort of the building – is required to make these systems work but that is not the case. So at One Zero they suggest a light touch retrofit, topping up insulation levels and doing the easy wins.
Howard points out that putting a heat pump on a really leaky house is going to be inefficient, but heating it with a gas boiler is also inefficient, so on one level there’s no difference. At the same time, if you use a heat pump, you may also knock four or five tons off your CO2 emissions every year.
However, it still makes sense to do as much as you can to reduce heat loss. When One Zero assess a property, they’ll make recommendations around deeper measures, which could be done first or incrementally over the following years to improve efficiency.
Considering payback has been a big part of this approach
One Zero are looking at measures that could start to pay back in 5 years rather than 40 years or more for deeper retrofits. Howard believes there are millions of homes that need to be improved in the next decade or two, so it’s important that this really appeals to people and offers a clear win. By starting with solar PV and a battery people can achieve a cash flow that they then might reinvest in the next steps. One Zero are also looking at finance packages so you don’t need all the capital upfront to get started on this home energy transformation.
One Zero plan is for people not looking to do a deep retrofit
Howard explains that One Zero is aiming to reach people that will not undertake a deep retrofit of their property, either for financial reasons or lack of engagement with this approach. Their approach is to provide a top up for cavity wall and loft insulation and then solar PV, a battery and a heat pump all for around £21,000. You could have a home energy transformation that would drop your bills by around 50-60% and your carbon emissions by 70%, all delivered within two weeks with minimum disruption. They think this is achievable for homes built after the 1930s, which already have some cavity wall insulation, double glazing and some loft insulation.
What is a deep retrofit? Check out the Kinver story in The Hub.
Every technology has an impact, but this should be weighed up against the alternative
Howard has put a great deal of research into the One Zero home energy transformation package. He believes that if we reached 100% renewable generation our rates of extraction of raw materials from the earth would drop to about a 30th of current levels. The backdrop is that we live in a highly extractive society, where 40% of global shipping relates to fossil fuels.
Everything we do has an impact, so with solar panels, there’s polysilicon production and issues around the supply chain, particularly with indentured slavery in some provinces of China, which can be hard to get around. This is also the case with many other products we are using. A solar panel can liberate the energy that went into making it within nine months of it being in use and the panels then have a 25-year warranty and possibly up to a 40-year lifespan. Most modern solar panels don’t contain any rare earths, they are just copper, an aluminium frame, silver for the conductors and glass. Effectively, polysilicon is a form of refined sand, and so all the parts are recyclable. There isn’t a huge recycling market yet, because most of the panels that have been installed are still in use.
People are also concerned about the huge amount of lithium being produced for home and car batteries. Howard explains that there are two ways in which lithium is produced. One is from mining, generally in Australia, whilst in the rest of the world lithium production is from liquid deposits. These exist as brines under the surface of the earth that can be extracted through a bore hole. The lithium is then taken out and the remaining liquid is pumped back down. So there is an impact but it should be smaller than for mining. Also lithium is a recyclable material, which is abundant in the UK.
Many manufacturers are now redesigning batteries so that they don’t contain cobalt, so as we move forward there should be fewer issues around rare minerals.
Heat pumps are generally made from copper and steel, both of which are abundant in a recycled form across the world. There’s a refrigerant involved, with two possible types, one of which has a lot less global warming potential.
All of these technologies will have a lower impact when compared to the extraction of fossil fuels and the resultant CO2 emissions from using them.
A repowered house – taken off the gas network
Your home can help you reduce your carbon footprint
For a typical dwelling One Zero’s home energy transformation could save between 3-6 tons of carbon over the course of a year, which is equivalent to 20 or 30 flights to Spain. For Howard this is incredibly impactful.
Your electric car battery could support your home energy use
It’s still early days but trials in vehicle to grid energy transfer could support our home energy use. An electric car could have a 30-100 kilowatt battery in it, while your home battery may only be 10 kilowatts, so if you could plug your car into your home and use your car battery to support your home that would be valuable.
It’s also a lot of lithium sitting around that could be used more effectively. Nissan is currently the only car manufacturer that allows this but that could change. The challenge is that most car manufacturers want their batteries used solely for powering their cars and consequently you will invalidate the warranty if it is used for other purposes.
However, these batteries have huge potential to increase storage capacity and help with the intermittency challenge in power generation. And Howard suggests that even accessing 10% of these batteries could have a meaningful impact.
One Zero has a community focus to support people on their renewable energy journey
People can be cautious, so One Zero is working to give people the confidence to act and then supporting them to share their experience with others. Currently they are geographically focused, working in communities where they can sign up more than one house at a time, maybe 5-10 houses across two or three streets. So they are reaching out to people who may not have thought they could be part of this journey into renewables, to help them change the way they think about it.
One Zero is operating in Sussex at the moment and has plans to launch in more areas over the course of the coming year. The next steps could be looking at managing a micro grid behind a distribution transformer that serves a street, so there would be enough generation and storage to provide the community with power for a large part of the year.
“It’s turning it from, that me and my castle thing, into us and our street.”
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