25 February 2011 | Luca Del Buono
Construction, Energy, Europe

 

The UK's largest ever zero carbon housing development will ideally be off-grid, and will prompt low energy use, say developers awaiting planning permission.

The project’s architect, Bill Dunster, will also showcase his eco straw house at the Ecobuild event next week (1-3 March)

A traffic light system is planned to prompt residents to keep their energy use low; LED lights on the wind turbines, which light up red, amber and green will show which block is using power most heavily. Developers anticipate that this will foster a healthy sense of competition between residents to keep their power use low.

Batteries will be charged during the day in order to keep the lights on at night, and the apartments themselves will be heavily insulated in order to keep power use as low as possible.

The 67-apartment development, PortZED, is designed to be entirely self-powered. Wind turbines, solar thermal and photovoltaic panel tiling on the six apartment buildings, to be built at the mouth of Shoreham port near Brighton, could potentially make the development “carbon negative”.

Resident behaviour will play a key role, says the project’s developer, Colin Brace of Bohogreen, who has worked on previous low-carbon projects. "There are studies showing that if you give people renewable energy they think, oh good, it's free, and their energy use actually goes up. So an important aspect of the project will be to educate people about their energy use,” said Brace.

Dunster, the architect responsible for the PortZED project, is famed for his BedZED eco-development in Sutton, which is designed to be entirely self-powered. He will also exhibit his eco housing stable, StramitZED – a straw board home that can be built for £135,000 (£20,000 less than the normal cost of constructing a code level 6 house) at Ecobuild 2011.

The apartments in PortZED will be up to 22 per cent more expensive than an average on-grid development, due to the extra costs of installing high-spec insulation and renewables.

However, the developers believe that there is a high demand for this kind of home due to their rarity. The financing for the project is already in place and the project is expected to be financially viable.

"The apartments will be designed to encourage communal living as much as possible," said Brace. "The most important thing is that residents have a sense of ownership," he added.

Rachel Shiamh, who built her own off-grid house in Wales last year, and who is organising an off-grid conference this summer, said: "When the sun comes out I think 'oh brilliant, I can use the hoover.’ It's made me far more aware of the elements.” She said that being off-grid makes her more aware of her power use.

The final decision over whether the housing project will be off-grid, or remain online, will be made at a later date, depending on the feedback from potential buyers, say developers. "I'm not absolutely sure that the market is ready for it yet…but that [off-grid] would certainly be the ideal," said Brace.

Government policy has posed an obstacle for the housing industry in the UK, with it struggling to reach agreement over the target for zero-carbon homes.

"We are now two-thirds of the way to having a working definition for 'zero carbon'," said John Alker, policy director at the Green Building Council.

"There are only a very few zero-carbon homes in the UK at the moment, so it's wonderful to see something like PortZED come along," he added.

Image: telex4 | Flickr

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