The media continue to follow the progress of our community-owned wind turbine with interest, and today BBC Nottingham provides an online update.
So far the turbine has generated over 240,000Kwh of electricity (latest figures from end of December 2010), the equivalent to saving the emission of 136 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The energy generated to date is worth approximately £54,000 and Sustainable Hockerton is hoping to pay investors a return of 5% for its first year of operation, with remaining monies funding sustainable projects in the village.
Hockerton’s electricity goes carbon neutral! By the end of November the community owned turbine had produced 221 220 kWh which roughly equals the electrical consumption of the village in a whole year. Looked at another way, Sustainable Hockerton Limited (SHL) have saved the emission of 125 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The impact is small on a national scale but massive on a local one! Congratulations to all concerned!
The tenants of one house have now been back in their home for 2 weeks, and we’ve taken a look at their energy use over that period.
Their total energy consumption is averaging at 11.93kWh/day. At that rate, their annual consumption will be 4,356kWh. However, the heaters are on at the moment – averaging 2.27kWh/day (pretty low!) – so we’re hoping the annual use will be lower than this, as these will not be on all year. It will also probably require more heating this winter as the house has been a building site for 6 months, and not able to build up a store of solar energy from the summer.
So how does this compare to their previous energy use? Well, looking at 18 months of bills prior to the retrofit, they were averaging 3,241kWh/yr of electricity and 18,972kWh/yr of gas.
So down from an annual energy consumption of 22,213kWh to 4,356kWh – not a bad start; long may it continue …
We have now completed the retrofit of the houses, and hopefully you’ll agree they’re looking great.
Front of the completed properties
The rear of the completed properties
The existing tenants of number 30, Mr & Mrs Morton, have already moved back in and are enjoying their new home. Newark and Sherwood Homes are advertising for tenants for number 28, which was previously void.
The houses will now be monitored for 2 years to see how they really perform. The monitoring includes:
- Temperature and relative humidity in 3 rooms of the house (sitting room, bedroom 1 & bedroom 2)
- External temperature
- CO2 level in the sitting room
- Total water and electricity consumption
- Electricity consumption on 8 individual sub-circuits
All this data is being monitored automatically and transmitted to a central database at 5 minute intervals, and we can view it real-time via a website.
We are also hoping to do additional monitoring on the properties, and are in discussion with a couple of universities about the possibiliity of collaborating on this.
Meters, meters and more meters!
We hope you’ve enjoyed our blog so far, and watch this space for more news of post occupancy evaluation …
