ROUND TABLE REVIEW 29
HEATING SOLUTIONS FOR ALL HOMES
The varied experience of delegates (from academia, the product supply chain, housebuilding and industry bodies CIBSE and UKGBC) helped provide a rich set of perspectives on strategies for complying with heating and renewables requiremements of the new Standard
Mike Jones of Garo Electric posed the core issue for future proofi ng schemes against electricity grid constraints: “how are housebuilders rethinking electrical infrastructure design – particularly consumer units, protection devices, and spare capacity,” with homes now to be equipped with heat pumps, PV, battery storage, and EV charging. He added that he was “shocked to know that there’s no
specifi cation whatsoever [in the Future Homes Standard] for what battery storage goes into a home – manufacturer, size, anything.” He warned that currently, installers will put in a 4 kW battery; but “really each house takes more than 5 kW a day.” The group critiqued the lack of focus on battery storage in the document, Jones’ asserted that future proofi ng was essential for example to tackle future demands on the grid meaning the Government decided it needed all electricity generated on sites, in that scenario “somebody has to go back and change things.” Nathan Tranter, of sponsor Panasonic Heating & Ventilation, said that the solution to balancing demand was for “everything to speak each other – the heat pump speaks to the tumble dryer.” This Internet Of Things-based Home Energy Management Systems approach is already happening, he said, adding that the industry was awaiting energy providers releasing an API (Application Programming Interface) “which will speak to the grid, and say ‘we are producing too much electricity, let’s dump some in the batteries.” He said it was already happening in Germany, and ”wasn’t far away.”
Mike Jones of Garo Electric said that “every new build should
have battery storage,” however this sort of prescription was currently absent in the Future Homes Standard. Ian Pritchett of Greencore Homes said that the “challenge with future proofi ng is the future keeps changing, and it’s changing quite fast at the moment.” He gave the example of exported energy prices being substantially higher for some homeowners selling back to the grid than the 13p per unit commonly quoted. Pritchett added: “We’ve got to think about houses completely differently, it’s not just about load shifting and storing energy, they will become income generators as well.” Meanwhile, Mike Leonard of Birmingham University said that the long view on PVs for homeowners meant looking at “what’s the product’s life span, does it have to be changed – and what is the embodied carbon of that?”
Underfl oor heating Ronny Reeves of sponsor WMS asked the group whether, if the Standard was “genuinely about reducing carbon emissions and cutting energy bills for homeowners,” not just hitting a “target number,” the sector should be looking to move to specifying lower temperature water for heating homes. “If air source heat pumps deliver a far higher SCOP (Seasonal Coeffi cient of Performance) at 35-45°C than at 55°C, should we be designing and building to lower temperatures?” Reeves said that his fi rm’s goal was to work with the sector to drive up effi ciency, and added that the ‘buildability’ of the UFH solution for volume housebuilders was evidenced by Barratt having
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