I suppose you'll have limit your electricity use, but then you won't become the plaything of the private energy companies and Ofgen, the shockingly lazy government watchdog. More like a sleeping policeman, if you ask me.
checkitout: 2 things
1 video
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2011/feb/28/life-offgrid-family-video
2
From the maker of BedZed comes ... PortZED, the self-powered apartments
UK's largest off-grid housing development includes traffic lights indicating energy use and will be powered by renewables
* Bibi van der Zee
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 February 2011 09.00 GMT
PortZED CSH Level 6 zero carbon development, Shoreham Port The proposed plan for 70 off-grid homes at the PortZED development in Shoreham, East Sussex
The UK's largest ever off-grid housing development will have a traffic light system prompting residents to keep their energy use low, say developers awaiting planning permission.
PortzED is the 67-apartment development dreamed up by Bill Dunster – the architect famous for the BedZed eco-development in Sutton – and it is designed to be entirely self-powered.
The six apartment buildings, to be built at the mouth of Shoreham port near Brighton, will be linked by wind turbines, and their southern face will be tiled in solar thermal and photovoltaics panels.
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.
But resident behaviour will also play a key role, says the developer, Colin Brace of Bohogreen, who has worked on previous low-carbon projects. "We can't tell people that you only have so much power, and no more. But 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.
"The apartments will be designed to encourage communal living as much as possible," says Brace, "rather than having everyone in their own rooms using their own sources of power." There will also be LED lights on the wind turbines which light up red, amber and green to show which block is using power most heavily, in order to foster "a healthy sense of competition between residents to keep their power use low".
"The most important thing is that residents have a sense of ownership," he adds. "There will be resident panels, and if there's something like a football match coming up, the idea is that they will be able to talk through how to handle the attendant surge in power demand."
Rachel Shiamh, who built her own off-grid house in Wales last year, and who is organising an off-grid conference this summer, argues that being off-grid makes her more aware of her power use. "When the sun comes out I think 'oh brilliant, I can use the hoover.' It's made me far more aware of the elements. And I think it's really important that this isn't just seen as some hippy and low-budget thing; this kind of development is so important for getting off-grid into the mainstream."
The apartments in Portzed will be up to 22% more expensive than an "on-grid" development, due to the extra costs of installing high-spec insulation and renewables. At current market rates, that could add £20-24,000 to the final price of a two-bedroom flat. The developers believe however 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 financial viable.
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. "I'm not absolutely sure that the market is ready for it yet," says Brace. "But that [off-grid] would certainly be the ideal."
The development is generally seen as a rare bit of good news from the housing industry, which has flatlined since the recession, and is still struggling to reach agreement with the government over the target for zero-carbon homes. In 2006, Labour announced a world-leading target to make all new housing zero carbon by 2016; when the housing minister, Grant Shapps, came into office last year he confirmed that the target would remain in place, and announced that they would have nailed the definition by the end of the summer. Nearly a year later, however, a final definition has still not been announced.
"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. The government's Zero Carbon Hub believes that, as of last week, agreement has been more or less reached on the standards for the fabric and the energy use of new residential buildings.
But the third part of the definition is the tricky 'allowable solutions', section. If builders cannot make a building entirely zero-carbon they are permitted to try off-site solutions, such as investing in a community energy scheme. Opponents of the allowable solutions argue that it should be possible to achieve zero-carbon fully onsite. But the building industry say that in some sites this is just not practicable.
"There just isn't enough sun or wind on some sites," says Alker, who points out that the position of Portzed – right on our south coast with lots of wind and sunshine – gives it an advantage that other sites just don't have.
"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 said. "It's this kind of exemplar which gets us all excited about it again."
