In a press release on Tuesday the Sero Group announced that:
FLATLINE, an industry led research project aiming to demonstrate the viability of a demand-side approach to energy management at domestic level, has reached a major milestone as residents move into three pilot homes at The Mill site in Cardiff.
Backed by the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, the ‘Fixed Level Affordable Tariffs Led by Intelligently Networked Energy’ (FLATLINE) project aims to significantly reduce residents’ energy bills, using a combination of domestic Demand Side Response and demand shifting for both heat and electricity.
The specially built pilot homes at The Mill development site in Cardiff will be closely followed by a further 46 homes at a separate site, Parc Eirin in Tonyrefail – which will see first residents move in this autumn as the first phase of the 225 new home scheme is complete.
According to the “Zero Carbon Lifestyle” section of the Sero Homes web site:
Every Sero Home is built ready for future generations, and that includes the future of travel.
Our homes are built with three phase electricity – the “broadband” of power – and electric vehicle (EV) fast charging points. You can recharge your car at a Sero Home in less than four hours, compared to around twelve hours in a traditional home (or about three days on a 13amp plug).
Sero Homes’ class-leading recharging times are only useful if you can afford the car in the first place. To tackle this, on most of our sites we offer our residents an option to take an EV lease with inclusive miles bundled in.
It’s probably no coincidence that today Robert Llewellyn announced a new edition of his Fully Charged Show. An introduction to the “Affordable Eco Housing” at The Mill and Parc Eirin:
You will note that at 14:40 into the video Bobby asks:
All the homes are on 3 phase? Is that right? Which is unusual in this country, but common elsewhere in Europe.
To which Andy replies:
It’s three phase for cars, because whilst you can charge a car from a 13 amp plug it will take you… a couple of days. 7.5 kW chargers are good for overnight charging, but what we’re keen to do is use these homes as part of the energy grid. And using them as part of the energy grid means we need to be able to draw power from the grid when the grid wants to get rid of it, and that means the quicker we can draw it the better.
All of which leaves a big unanswered question, in my mind at least. What about feeding power back into the grid when it needs more of it?
Since that is just the sort of thing we have been working on for the last 7 or 8 eight years here at the V2G Group I felt compelled to comment as follows on Twitter:
Please note that something else we’ve been working on for a few years here in the (Silic)Inny Valley is Mobility as a Service, or “MaaS” for short:
Watch this space!
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