News Archive
New houses to store sun’s energy all year long
Released on 05/03/2010
A social housing development in the UK will showcase a technique for storing the sun’s energy for release throughout the year, even in winter.
The “seasonal solid-state thermal storage” technique (SSTS), to be used for nine new dwellings on the site of a former supermarket in Derby, sees solar energy captured by a giant building-integrated photovoltaic panel, which generates electricity and heats rubble stored in a highly-insulated basement cavity.
The energy stored in this rubble – recovered bricks and concrete from the demolition of a former supermarket on the site – will be recovered in the dark, cold months using air-sourced heat pumps.
Other technologies will help the £1-million development – comprising six terraced houses and three flats – achieve level six in the Code for Sustainable Homes, due to be mandatory by 2016, said Vincent Smedley, technical director of East Midlands Renewable Energy Ltd. (EMRE), one of the consortium partners behind the project.
Integrated Concrete Form (ICF) will be used for the walls. Supplied by ICF Tech, the system consists of strong-yet-lightweight interlocking forms made from fire-retardant Expanded Polystyrene (EPS). The forms will be filled with a thermally efficient concrete to form an airtight, monolithic concrete wall with a U-value of 0.11 w/mK in a wall just 348mm wide, including plasterboard and external thin coat render finish.
And when the rubble starts to cool as winter deepens – Smedley says that the recoverable energy will go down by 30% – a combined heat and power (CHP) unit burning waste vegetable oil will kick in so residents don’t feel the chill or stumble in the dark.
(This article appears in full in Construction Research & Innovation, a new journal published by the CIOB. Visit: www.ciob.org.uk/resources/cri)
