Grand Designs eat your heart out this week as the first low cost ‘energy positive’ house is built in Britain.
This three-bedroom house generates more energy than its inhabitants will use and only cost £125,000 to build as it is powered quite simply, by the sun.
Using batteries to store the electricity, which it generates from the solar panels on the roof and more panels in the garden, and having massive amounts of insulation to reduce energy use in winter months, it should be able to export electricity to the national grid for eight months of the year.
For every £100 spent on electricity used, it should be able to generate £175 in electricity exports, said Professor Phil Jones, who designed the house specifically to meet low carbon housing targets.
Shame about the timing of the house launch then as the Conservative government have just scrapped these targets to ensure housebuilders are not too regulated.
“It was disappointing to see Osborne scrap the plans,” said Jones. “One reason we built this house was to demonstrate to builders that you could meet the standards at an affordable price with off-the-shelf technology. The housebuilders could do it too if they wanted to.”
Perhaps this is the way forward for housebuilders then to protect the environment and get Britain to produce its own energy at an affordable price.
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