Do Feed-in Tariffs meet your expectations?: The government’s new regime for funding small scale renewables has come in dribs and drabs – meanwhile the renewables community has been waiting for feed-in tariffs (FITs) to start. Finally they have arrived; the final details to the UK feed-in tariffs’ scheme were released on the 1st February 2010. Here Gavin Harper presents a summary and breakdown of the salient points....
Real low carbon development - Lammas low impact living: A sea of mud and dumper trucks parked on a Welsh hillside - it’s a building site....but not just any old building site. This land is the home of the Lammas project - one of the UK’s first (perhaps THE first) deliberately planned, low-impact eco villages, built with planning permission on agricultural land. Olwyn Pritchard went along to take a look at the green shoots at the site...
The thermal detective: Recently Ivan Lucas, from Epogee/Navitron, visited our farm to deliver a new backup water turbine. He had his thermal camera with him so we thought it would be interesting to go around the property and take a few thermal images to see how effective our renovations have been. The following pictures highlight the hot (bright areas) and the cold (darkest areas) of the building, and were taken on a rather frosty evening in early February 2010. Keith Hall interprets the results ...
Can power ups and downs be smoothed out?: Electricity is our most polluting energy resource, releasing 0.537kgCO2 for each kWh generated, and a third of the nation’s supply is consumed within domestic buildings. What influence can demand-side management of domestic electrical appliances have upon variability of the UK national grid? Jasper Garland speculates that it might be smarter to better manage the demand itself...
Quality assured Passivhaus buildings (part 1): In part one of a two part article, Mark Siddall of Devereux Architects, observes that there appears to be mounting confusion about the Passivhaus standard and reflects upon the implications of such misunderstandings. It’s time to straighten out some the facts.
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Lessons on natural ventilation: To achieve low cost cooling in our warming world, we need first to get the building design right, to use natural ventilation for as wide a range of temperatures and functions as possible and to do so with real people in mind. Sue Roaf introduces us to the badgirs (windcatchers) of Yazd...
Read an insider report from this issue here
Also:
Cavity wall insulation
Airtightness needs attention to detail
The forum debate - feed-in tariffs
Green building physics - moisture and humidity - part 2
And loads more.
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