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  • HPH189 : Is an electric car the perfect accompaniment for a low energy home? – with Robert Llewellyn from Fully Charged

    HPH189 : Is an electric car the perfect accompaniment for a low energy home? – with Robert Llewellyn from Fully Charged

    Actor and TV presenter Robert Llewellyn shares his insights about the future of electric cars and energy production.

    Image source: www.fullychargedshow.co.uk

    Interview with Robert Llewellyn

    Robert Llewellyn is an actor and TV presenter, perhaps best known for his role as Kryten on Red Dwarf. His Internet project Fully Charged discusses electric vehicles and renewable energy and is expanding beyond its origins on YouTube.

    From petrol-head to EV enthusiast

    Robert confesses that he once loved cars with big petrol engines. He experienced his first ride in a Prius back in 2001, but it took time to reconsider what he was interested in and, by default, promoting. He got his first electric vehicle (EV) in 2009.

    He acknowledges there have been teething problems along the way – the lack of a charging infrastructure initially didn’t help – and comments that well-funded propaganda from the fossil fuel industry has attempted to hold back development.

    However, Robert describes the current global car market as being at its peak in terms of the internal combustion engine, and says the wider transition to electric vehicles is finally gathering pace. Eventually, as with asbestos, tobacco, catalytic converters and leaded petrol, the corporations will change. For now, Renault, Nissan and Tesla are leading the way.

    Electric vehicles are part of a bigger revolution

    By thinking of an electric car as a battery and computer on wheels, Robert can see even bigger change ahead in the form of vehicle automation. Having experienced the fully autonomous Nissan Leaf, Robert says “When you go in it, you go ‘alright, fair enough. This stuff works.’” The car performed way better than any driver Robert has ever seen. He expects total adoption of automation by the trucking industry within five years.

    “They won’t sell models, they’ll sell mobility”

    To be a success, electric cars will need to completely change the ownership model. It’s not just oil consumption that is unsustainable. Regardless of whether there’s enough lithium to supply batteries at the rate the car market is growing, there isn’t enough steel, rubber or plastic to make enough cars. As 90% of cars on the road are not in use 90% of the time, selling a service (as opposed to a car) is the direction manufacturers will have to take.

    With a self-driving car you could use it as much as you do now without owning it or having it parked outside your house. You wouldn’t even need to charge it, Robert says. “It will be charged when it turns up at your house because it will have charged itself.” Getting a charging point at your house is still worthwhile though, as he adds, “It’s very obvious that it’s not going to happen overnight.” It’s likely to be at least 10 years and possibly 20 before we see a significant change in car ownership.

    The existing energy production system has hidden costs

    When making the TV series ‘How Do They Do It?’, Robert learnt that oil refineries use so much electricity they have to have their own power stations! One in Pembrokeshire uses the same amount of electricity in a year as Coventry and Leicester. Thus, reducing oil refining would enable the greater electricity consumption needed for more electric cars.

    This typifies the ‘invisible’ costs of established technology. Petrol stations are considered a normal part of everyday life, therefore the costs aren’t thought about. Yet Robert points out the energy required to supply petrol stations is “catastrophically colossal”.

    Energy companies are starting to embrace change

    Financial savings are motivating change in the energy industry. Robert gives the example of solar plants. As with coal and nuclear, initial installation is hugely expensive, but once up and running, solar is much cheaper. No fuel costs, no waste management, no storage and no transportation mean massive savings.

    In the case of Pacific Edison, the huge American power company who use coal, nuclear and gas plants to generate electricity, “peak management issues” were overloading the grid. They found the cheapest solution was batteries, and this was in fact Tesla’s first multi-megawatt sized grid battery backup.

    Renewable energy production is growing globally

    It’s encouraging to see the adoption of renewable technologies “at breakneck pace” around the world. Robert points to China where the rate of solar panel and wind turbine installations is “mindboggling”. The UK is gradually producing more renewable energy too: it is actually the biggest offshore wind generating country in the world, taking advantage of the fact that 40% of all the wind in Europe is around the British Isles.

    You can run your house off your car and vice versa

    Robert says he doesn’t actually see himself as very ‘green’ and even admits to having an Aga! However, he has made gradual changes. He only has electric cars now, and in his house he has improved the insulation, added solar panels, very good windows and a battery on the wall. As a result, his electricity bill has dropped by about 85%.

    This form of domestic energy production and storage represent a big threat to the status quo, which he calls massively inefficient: “We have to subsidise all of the fossil fuel plants to a colossal amount of money to keep them running.” Robert’s house is typical of how current technology can be much more efficient, and he describes how some offices in the UK use similar systems and save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year without using any grid electricity.

    Tesla Powerwall Battery
    Image source: www.inhabitat.com

    Local energy production and storage would be more efficient

    The big UK energy companies are actually in favour of producing, owning and selling electricity locally as it would save a lot of money. The price of electricity fluctuates from getting paid to use it, to being fantastically expensive. At peak times it is imported at a higher cost than we ever pay for it, by many thousands of percent.

    Robert counters recent claims we’d need ten times more electricity if we moved to local production and storage. More intelligent and regular use would avoid the sudden peaks and troughs that are currently so costly and inefficient.

    Volume new builds aren’t designed to be energy efficient

    Robert doesn’t hold back about the standard of new houses, which he says are “designed and built by morons!” He laments their individual gas boilers, traditional pitched roofs that don’t face south and lack of solar panels.

    Robert cites studies showing you can build an efficient house at the cheapest possible cost where the house produces ALL the energy it needs, emphasising, “the people who live in that house will have free heating and lighting for the life of the building.”

    Lower energy homes could make a huge difference

    By using systems like the ones Robert has, with solar panels, batteries for storage and electric cars, a house can place about 70% less demand on the grid. While this means very little by itself, application on a much larger scale could have a huge environmental impact. A million houses set up in that way would mean closing down two fossil fuel burning power plants.

    Find out more

    Visit the website of Fully Charged

    Follow Robert Llewellyn on Twitter

     

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Robert Llewellyn

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  • What Houses Would the Victorians be Building Today?

    What Houses Would the Victorians be Building Today?

    One of the funny things about my exploration into what houses we should be building in the 21st Century is that I hear the same messages crop up time and again. This is actually good for me, as someone who’s learning about energy efficiency and sustainable design, because it reinforces the wisdom.

    If I only had one message to pass onto a newcomer to self building, it would be ‘to minimise the amount of energy your house will need before even thinking about generating energy.’

    While this has been a message I’ve heard repeated in various guises from my early podcasts up until now, do I really understand how far you can take this concept? Probably not.

    This is where our podcast episode with Jonathan Hines from Architype is fascinating. I’ve always thought of minimising energy losses as taking a fabric first approach (really good insulation, airtightness, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, etc.) but what I didn’t understand is that this means the design, too. The endless possibilities of the building’s form, for example, will each impact on the energy use. So design decisions can have major repercussions. This is why an emphasis on simplicity should lead to a more energy efficient building. This doesn’t mean boring but something that is elegantly simple (as Architype like to say). It’s a process of refinement.

    That’s where I want to consider older houses for a moment. I have always been drawn to period properties in preference to modern houses but have not yet fully appreciated why. Perhaps I’ve hit on part of the answer in my conversation with Jonathan. He mentioned last year’s RIBA Future Homes Commission study:

    “It reported some very interesting findings, that people liked the idea of a modern house but they tended not to buy them because what they saw in them was of poor architectural quality. So the things they like in a house are light airy spaces, high ceilings, you know, good sized windows. Now they see those in a Georgian or Victorian house and they don’t see those in the new houses that they look at. So they’ll buy an old house, albeit it’s cool and draughty and it’s going to cost a fortune to heat because the architectural qualities there overweigh those sort of practical things. My belief is that if we can combine the practical things of energy efficiency and lower running costs with good architectural quality then we are on to a winner.”

    Victorian street

    This is really interesting if we consider what was going on around the time of the Georgian (1714 – 1830) and Victorian (1837 – 1901) eras. It was the years of British Empire and also the big changes set in motion by the Industrial Revolution. Energy was not an issue. The world’s wealth was brought back to London and this was reflected in the grandeur of the architecture.

    In today’s world things are very different. Our population is increasing at the same time as we’re squandering our fossil fuel reserves. A lot of materials are finite. Would the Victorians follow the same path now as they did back then? I would argue that it wouldn’t even cross their minds. They’d be looking to what would be the most sense now for the situation we face.

    It does seem to me that there are always people with the right answers out there. We just need to find them and listen to what they have to say! That said, I really urge you to check out my interview with Jonathan.

  • 7 Enemies of Energy Efficient Homes

    Do you wonder why others aren’t focussed on getting themselves into an energy efficient home?

    What factors undermine the logical drive for energy efficiency?

    At this time it’s crucial that we do not make the wrong decisions when it comes to building or retrofitting houses. 

     

    Whilst on holiday I happened to bump into some people who worked in the shale gas industry. They were very pleasant but, as with the bloke down the pub who I discovered had voted UKIP the other day, there was a slight tension when I started asking more in-depth questions. To be honest they allayed many of my fears, but perhaps armed with more knowledge myself I could have dug deeper.

    Anyway, one aspect that became very apparent from the conversations was that they did not see themselves as having any responsibility in making sure that the energy they extracted goes as far as it possibly can. I know this probably isn’t part of their job description but for some reason I found it unsettling.

    It got me thinking as to some of the factors that might be slowing down the roll out of energy efficient homes.

    1. Cheap energy

    Although energy efficiency makes sense, it’s amazing how quickly it can fall down the list of priorities when cheap energy is plentiful. When I initially started my research, I was unaware of the energy crisis of the 1970s and the subsequent drive for better housing in the 1980s. Unfortunately, despite many solutions being exhibited at trade shows such as Homeworld, none of the energy efficient designs made it into the mainstream.

    In our current predicament of depleting fossil fuel reserves it would seem very unlikely that the cost of energy could go down, but if the extraction of shale gas leads to another ‘oil rush’ then it could happen. The worst case scenario would be if subsidies were given to these companies in a desperate bid to keep the energy coming rather than address the efficiency of our building stock.

     

    2. Fossil Fuel Industries

    Companies that make a living from the extraction of coal, gas, oil, etc., are ultimately going to be out of business on this planet. It may take 500 years, 200 years or happen much sooner than we all imagine, but these finite resources will eventually run out (and we also know some of them can’t be used anyway without triggering the final disastrous consequences of climate change). For a very lucrative business, they will not take this lying down. As experts in locating and extracting resources, with considerable funding behind them, don’t expect them to wind down their activities, even if that might be what’s best.

     

    3. Weak Legislation

    Governments, more than ever, have a big role to play in driving up the standards of our homes. Clearly this can’t happen overnight but with an over-arching goal and an incremental approach, at least things will be moving in the right direction.

    Of course, this is often easier said than done. In the UK, the Code for Sustainable Homes was such regulation, with the long term plan to make all homes zero carbon by 2016. Unfortunately it’s falling on some rocky ground as its box ticking approach seems to favour bolt-on gadgets over fabric efficiency. This is where the government’s contemplating scrapping it and clinging onto the positive spin of ‘cutting the red tape to get the UK building again’. Simplification of systems is a good thing but I personally believe getting rid of targets and moving deadlines is not a good solution. Of course, the Code needs an overhaul though!

     

    4. The Difficulty of Retrofitting

    While simple measures (such as installing loft insulation) can help our homes perform better, more radical retrofits are invasive. Whether insulating externally or internally there is likely to be loss of features, which can be hard for some homeowners to accept. Plus the more airtight the building becomes, the more important it is to have a clear ventilation strategy. With no straightforward solutions it’s easy to favour new build or consider retrofitting the property at a later date when better approaches might be available.

     

    5. Homeowners!

    For some homeowners it will be a lack of finances that stops them from upgrading to something more efficient. For others it could be the thought of living for the day – who cares about the right or sensible thing to do when they can have their dream kitchen! House appearance may also play a part in the psyche, deterring some individuals who imagine energy efficient homes only to be rather ugly boxes.

     

    6. Downsizing

    For those who live in a reasonable size of house and are feeling the pinch, the most immediate way to reduce running costs is to move into a smaller house. This helps the individual but doesn’t address the overall problem of rising utility bills. It could also lead to a period where a lot of larger houses become vacant or are only partially heated during the colder months.

     

    7. Different standards of energy efficient home

    What classes as an energy efficient home to one person might be laughable to another. As with labels such as ‘eco’ or ‘sustainable’ or ‘low energy’ homes, it’s all about quantifying what these things are before they become the buzzword of the day. That’s one reason that an as-built standard such a Passivhaus makes life much simpler: you can immediately tell whether a house hits the mark.

     

    What do you think is slowing down progress to energy efficient homes? Is there anything you’d like to add to the list?

  • HPH012 : Should You Invest in Renewable Energy? – with Dr Derek Taylor from Altechnica

    HPH012 : Should You Invest in Renewable Energy? – with Dr Derek Taylor from Altechnica

    Dr Derek Taylor from Altechnica weighs up the pros and cons of various renewable energy sources and shares his thoughts on whether you should be generating at home. He also talks about his role in creating one of the UK’s most energy-efficient homes.

     

    Interview with Dr Derek Taylor

    Dr Taylor trained at the Architectural Association but got interested in renewable energy and low energy building design in 1972. From then he started to pursue more of a renewables orientated career and did a masters in designing wind turbines and renewables, and came to the Open University. He is particularly interested in bringing together renewable energy and architecture to try and make it much more effective.

     

    There are still Fossil Fuels Available But CO2 Emissions are the Problem

    A lot of people believe we have reached peak oil and that we are now at the point of depletion. There’s still a lot of coal in the ground and a fair amount of gas available but their CO2 emissions are a big concern for climate change. It’s clear we need to make a step change. The scientists say we need to cut CO2 emissions by 80% in the next few decades.

    Cooling tower

     

    UK’s Best Renewable Energy Source is Wind

    In terms of renewable energy Dr Taylor believes wind energy and offshore wind energy offers the most promise to the UK. He explains that 40% of the potential wind energy resource in Europe is actually in the UK. That figure is looking at land based resources, with even more potential offshore.

     

    Phenomenal Increase in Wind Power

    Dr Taylor has recently been updating the wind energy section of the Open University renewable energy course. He noted that in the year 2000 there was about 30,000 MW of wind energy globally whereas in 2010, there was 38,000 MW installed in just one year. Now globally there is over 200 GW. Dr Taylor is impressed with the progress. The UK currently has the largest offshore wind farm in the world, which is off the coast of Thanet (installed by Swedish company Vattenfall), and they’re currently building a third offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary, called the London Array, which will produce a fair proportion of London’s electricity needs.

    Wind-farm-on-hill

     

    Floating Wind Energy Technology Has a Huge Potential

    Tapping into floating wind energy technology, the wind energy resources in UK waters would be equivalent to the Gulf Oil reserves but every year.

     

    Renewable Energy Solutions Fit into Different Scales

    Generally there are three types of solution: building scale, an intermediate scale – which Dr Taylor calls neighbourhood or community scale – and large scale.

     

    Solar Makes The Most Sense For Buildings

    In terms of buildings, solar energy often makes the most sense for electricity generation, hot water and also for reducing space heating loads. In the summertime it can be used for cooling.

     

    Heat Pumps

    The temperature of the ground below a certain depth is constant throughout the year, so this provides another ambient source of energy.

     

    Wind Energy Isn’t Normally a Good Solution for Urban Areas

    The usability of renewables depends on the location as to whether they will perform effectively. Wind energy can make sense but in most cases it doesn’t in urban areas. Wind energy technology usually starts to make sense at community scale upwards, for example, a medium scale turbine might be appropriate for a village or a town. Costs can then be spread amongst householders.

     

    Former Watermill Sites Could Have Potential for Hydro Power

    The best sites for hydro tend to be in mountainous areas, but Dr Taylor suggests that former watermill sites could be good places to generate. It’s important to note that when watermills were in use there was less water extraction so there was more water running through the system. Dr Taylor did a renewable energy study for Merton Council which found that a short stretch (19km) of the River Wandle once had about 90 watermills in operation.

    Old Water Mill

     

    Biofuels Make Most Sense When it’s a Waste Product

    Growing energy fuels is very difficult to justify when you haven’t got much land. A forested area can obviously provide wood as a fuel. Dr Taylor believes the situation with biofuels probably makes sense if you can use it as waste, such as food waste and oil waste. You can then process that with biology to produce gases and fuels. In Denmark there are community digesters where manure, food waste and sewage combine to produce methane – the process mimics a cow’s stomach and produces gas that can run small power stations.

     

    Tidal Barrages Expensive to Build and Maintain

    The main problem with tidal energy is that it’s been exploited using tidal barrages, like a big dam across an estuary. These are very expensive to build and can impact on the rich eco systems. In France, there is an example of a successful barrage called La Rance.

     

    Tidal Stream Technology Shows Promise

    Essentially they are underwater wind turbines which capture the currents as they flow around the coasts. One of the big advantages is that because water is 800 times denser than air for a given size of rotor diameter you get a lot more power out compared to wind turbines because air is very low density. This means much smaller devices can give more power output. The downside is that these devices are situated in difficult locations and have to be able to cope with the water reliably. They’re still in the early stages of development.

     

    Devices Built to Harness Wave Energy Have to Survive The Stormiest Seas

    Dr Taylor reckons that wave energy is an even more difficult one to achieve. The energy resources from the waves are substantial but you have to build devices which can survive 24/7 in the most stormy seas.

     

    Failures Important to Progressing the Technologies

    Very few of the wave energy projects actually go through the iterative stages that are needed to develop a technology. Lots of funding goes into building one device and that fails and there’s no money to carry on. Those failures are vital to progressing the technology.

     

    We Can Use Fossil Fuel Reserves Much More Effectively

    While fossil fuels might still be available, Dr Taylor believes that the price will be the main constraint to using them. He stresses how in other countries they’re actually much further on with many aspects of design, performance of houses and also the use of wind energy.

     

    Combined Heat and Power Makes Use of Waste Heat

    One approach for district heating is to use the waste heat from power stations to heat houses. Dr Taylor calculated that if you add up all the energy being lost from the cooling towers around Britain, it amounts to more energy than is used to heat all the houses in Britain. Currently this energy is just allowed to go into the atmosphere or into the sea at coastal locations. In Denmark 65% of houses are heated this way or from large scale boilers. To achieve this heat mains are laid under roads or gardens and each house is then connected up. Part of the difficulty is that electricity networks are privatised and they would rather do what they’ve always done.

     

    Heat Stores Play an Important Part

    Dr Taylor explains that Battersea Power Station was a combined heat and power station when it was operating. There was a pipe under the Thames which provided heat for 4000 houses in Pimlico. They’ve subsequently re-installed a small combined heat and power station at Pimlico which delivers the same thing. Part of that scale of development enables very large heat stores to be built in, so that heat can be stored when you’re generating electricity for use later. Heat from other sources such as solar or wind energy can also be used to charge up the heat stores.

    London Battersea powerstation

     

    Nuclear Energy is Expensive and Funding Must Be Offset to Look After The Waste

    In France about 80% of their electricity comes from nuclear, but this doesn’t mean its future is clear. Not only is it expensive but disposing of nuclear waste is still a big problem. How much money will be needed in the future to look after nuclear waste from the past? There are also discussions about what’s going to be the most useful type of fuel after uranium.

     

    Low Energy Buildings Fall into Two Strands

    Historically there are two strands of developing low energy buildings. One is known as the super insulated approach that tends to be a lightweight construction with lots of insulation. The other approach is known as passive solar, which is reliant on lots of solar orientation, lots of glazing and high thermal mass. The solar gains are trapped in the thermal mass so that it acts like a storage heater.

     

    Super Passive Solar

    In the UK passive solar hasn’t worked well in the spring or autumn times when there tends to be quite high cloud cover. There is also not much benefit in the winter time whereas super insulation then works well. So a super passive solar approach combines the two so you have a high level of thermal mass but it’s inside a super insulated envelope. Dr Taylor worked on a house in Herefordshire which might be one of the UK’s most energy efficient homes.

     

    Super Passive Solar Goes a Step Further Than Passivhaus

    Dr Taylor really likes the Passivhaus standard although he finds it unfortunate that they chose the name Passivhaus as it’s easily confused with passive solar. It is really an ultra super insulation approach. The Passivhaus design system doesn’t really take into account the thermal gains from thermal mass, so you can’t get that extra point further of actually optimising the design to get to zero space heating, although a lot of Passivhaus buildings are getting pretty close to that.

     

    With New Builds, Push the Envelope as far as You Can

    For new buildings Dr Taylor thinks you have to push the building’s envelope as far as you can because it’s much more difficult to upgrade. If you can design as much insulation as possible and get to Passivhaus standards then it will be well worth doing and shouldn’t cost you a great deal more on top of the building.

     

    If You Have The Money, a Passivhaus Retrofit Can be a Good Investment

    Upgrading an existing building to Passivhaus is not a cheap option. However it’s probably better using that money to go into the building’s fabric rather than getting an expensive new kitchen!

     

    Internal Insulation Must be Done Correctly or You Risk Damaging the Building

    External insulation is a much easier solution but risks affecting the aesthetics. The problem with internally insulating walls is that there will be a reduction of floor area. Also, with solid walls, for instance, prior to that wall being internally insulated, it’s been kept warm by the space heating of the house but once the insulation is between it and the heating then it’s obviously a cold object and it’s a cold surface. So, unless the internal insulation is done correctly, if any vapour gets into that structure it will hit the cold wall and condense. This can cause rotting problems.

    craftsman insulating a wall

     

    Combined Heat and Power Could Buy us Some Time to Retrofit

    Dr Taylor refers back to how we might reduce the CO2 emissions from buildings. Investing in combined heat and power, and district heating would enable the existing buildings to start to use heating which is actually low carbon. It would also buy some time to upgrade the performance of the existing housing stock.

     

    We Only Have One Chance to Make our Homes Energy Efficient

    In order to reach 80% reductions in CO2 Dr Taylor believes that we must go beyond a little cavity wall insulation. He thinks we only get one shot at this and it should be done properly. The challenge will be funding it. If there were a scheme where everyone was connected to a heat network then there’s a potential revenue stream for the sale of that heat to people which could be used to fund insulation of buildings down the road.

     

    Incremental Improvements Should Have a Long Term Plan

    Try and have a plan or a strategy so you’re not going to foreclose on the options. Do the thinking upfront so that improvements compliment each other. If you have a loft that can be insulated then certainly the more upgrades you can do to that the better.

     

    Dr Derek Taylor’s company

     

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Dr Derek Taylor.

     

    Goals for House Planning Help in 2013

    Ben Adam-Smith outlines his objectives for making House Planning Help an even better resource. This includes:

    • Getting more detail into each podcast episode
    • Creating more videos for the House Planning Help YouTube channel
    • Hand-picking more industry experts as guest bloggers
    • Hosting Google+ Hangouts to debate key issues

     

    Regen Media Wants to Help Your Business

    Regen Media produces the House Planning Help Podcast. Ben Adam-Smith explains how if you are in the UK and you need video or audio for your business, then Regen Media wants to help you. It is very important to have a presence on multiple platforms in the age of the Internet so that your company can be heard above the noise! Regen Media can create media that will do this and market your business in a much more dynamic way than advertising. Contact us today to find out more.

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