as world leaders meet in Glasgow COP26, to talk about the future of energy and how we're
going to decarbonize we're here in Wales where it's actually happening
right now in this video we're going to look at a blueprint of future energy where are we gary we're
in the Rhondda the Rhondda valley but what were they dragging out of that valley all those years ago
yeah ironically this is where a lot of the world's coal used to come from particularly
steam coal use the power ships trains and all sorts of generation yeah now we've completely
flipped it on its head you'll notice behind us we see solar panels on the roof the house behind
us is jam-packed with low carbon technology but it's really the brains behind it that
we're going to look at today and how all this comes together to create a fantastic experience
for the customers who are going to end up buying this home okay this is
plot 26 so shall we cop a look at what's inside it gordon take our shoes off and go in
so on the surface this looks like any other two-bedroom home apart from those solar panels
on the roof that we saw but it's actually packed full of the latest low carbon technology that's
set to become mainstream for how we build our houses in the future so we're going to step
through all those different elements to explain how they work together but where we're going to
start gary as we always do let's start at the consumer unit experience love a consumer unit
and i think it's in this cupboard here oh what a treat i'm going to both go in here
this isn't a consumer unit and when i open it up it's a three-phase distribution board
and for a two-bed house that's pretty enormous and probably oversized so let's think about it
it is a three-phase supply we'll see the thinking behind having a three-phase supply
into this installation as we go through the tour you'll notice down here we've got a surge
protection device now we could have done the risk assessment to say that maybe we didn't
need a surge device when you see the electronic equipment installed in this installation for me
this is a must these devices here are actually feeding up to the top board so these feed out here
of which we've got the panel split into two sides so this left hand side down here is what they call
regulated so that means we know the load so we know the value of wattage of the immersion heater
and the lights installed downstairs so we actually know the value of these loads and we will measure
those as well this is the unregulated side so in other words we don't know the value of load so
on the socket outlet circuits anything could be plugged in and obviously draw the load required
for the item that's been plugged in you also might notice on these ones here the little red led
underneath yes so here we've got the wireless afds and as we come down here you might notice this rcd
here for the solar pv and look at the symbols we've got there that makes this one a b-type rcd
so down here we've got the metering and we go into a deep dive with the meter in there is a
standard three-phase kilowatt-hour meter at the origin of the installation which we will look at
but they've also got the ability to split down to look at in greater detail what each element is
using so we've got the regulated and unregulated meters here we've got these two here which are the
solar generation and the heat pump so they're also measured as well for metering and we come
along here we've got another rcd here this rcd is for the three-phase ev charger there you go
that's where that three-phase comes in as well as the monitoring for the dc storage
so move away from the distribution board it starts to get a little bit more technical so i think it's
time to pass it over to you gordon that looks remarkably like well let's say it's a shoe box
we're in under stairs covered aren't we yeah what else would you expect to find under the stairs but
the shoe box no it hasn't got your flip-flops in it this is a heat pump and specifically on
this project it's a ground source heat pump so more efficient than you get from those uh
air source heat pumps that we see mentioned in the media a lot because obviously this is a
new build there's a lot of things the developer could do to get maximum efficiency so these two
pipes here are from our ground coil that is bought deep underground there's a one that feeds a number
of properties outside that comes in here through the shoe box so this is a three kilowatt uh heat
pump and then obviously we've got the floor and returned pipework and another meter so that the
exact performance of the heating system can be measured as well we're in the kitchen this is
in the fridge and i'm not a stranger to going to the fridge in the kitchen this is our Sonnen
battery we've got a five kilowatt hour here battery setup and it's a hybrid okay so what does
that mean it means it does both the inverting and the storage in here so from the solar around the
roof we have our cables coming into a dc isolator in the roof space it still brings dc down into our
battery obviously to charge them but obviously when we want to go out into the installation
or to export it go through the inverter and it's turned back into ac so we know it will store the
energy from our solar array but it also brings in energy trading doesn't it in those off-peak times
we can store the energy in these batteries if we're lucky enough that energy might be at one or
two pennies per kilowatt hour or even we might be paid in order to charge the batteries within here
let's think of the setup as well that we've got here it's actually this height for a reason
the reason is we could slot another set of batteries in under here making it a 10
kilowatt storage capacity it's got a 50 mil gap here as expected and at least half a meter gap
here allowing air to circulate through and we know in previous generations of this style of battery
setup we had to have maybe on an outside wall okay we're not on an outside wall here you can see how
technology has changed so we've got it's fitted in here inside of the kitchen on an internal wall
regular viewers to the channel will know i love a cupboard especially when it's got a central
heating cylinder in but this one is incredibly smart this is the Mixergy smart cylinder and
it's got some great features first of all it's got our floor return that come from the shoe box
downstairs when we're in water mode that kicks up to a higher temperature to heat the water
alternatively we could use excess energy from our solar pv panels which is regulated into the
cylinder itself now this cylinder learns how much water is used and will only heat enough water to
match the demand that's required by the homeowner so it starts heating the tank top down i'm sort of
just mixing with that cold water and as we saw downstairs there's even more metering in here
to monitor the hot water consumption that will all feed into our model of this building that
we're going to talk about a little bit later on to keep our plumber friends happy upstairs we have
got that traditional looking radiator but what you might have realized during this tour is there is
no gas in any of the houses on this estate they're all using electricity in order to generate the
heat so the radiators upstairs working off that ground source heat pump are low heat radiators
we traditionally associate a ground source heat pump with under floor heating which they've
got downstairs so let's see how we control that heating up steps that's enough plumbing talk gary
let's get back to the world of wires and how this heating system is controlled so upstairs we've got
a zone for the radiators downstairs a separate zone for the underfloor heating controlled by
what looks like a normal thermostat but this actually is pretty smart the green led there
indicates the set point that you'll have set up in the home user app that we're going to look at in
another video because of some great features with that but once you've set your set point
you want to turn it up it's just again look all over when an led comes on and again then down to
decrease the temperature um so this goes through the control system that again we're going to
look at a little bit further than not directly wired to the zone valves that you'd have in a
normal heating system and we're not just measuring temperature in this property here this sensor here
behind us measuring the co2 levels and also the humidity so we can start to consider how healthy
the environment is within this property how often do we see this a new house being built with an ev
charging point already being installed and not just the facility to have one in the future and
this ev charging point is also three phase meaning that two things the customer can charge their
car considerably quicker in other words they can plug it in and charge it at 22 kilowatts per hour
and also when they can plug it in and leave it and then optimize the price in which they want
to charge out and take advantage of that excess green energy that's floating around on the grid
well it's not just your car you can use to be clever with your energy consumption what we've got
here are smart appliances so load up the washing machine in the morning press the go button but the
actual time that starts will be determined by that optimum energy price again linked seamlessly into
the control system that goes with this house we're back in the cupboard almost where this journey
started and as we've walked around this property and seen all these smart connected items like the
ground source heat pump solar pv dc storage the smart heating system the smart hot water tank
and the three phase ev charging point i'm thinking that's about six or seven different
apps for me to master i thought it would be rounding off a through the keyhole gary for who
would pull something together like this well this project was pulled together by the Sero Group who
have done a fantastic job of integrating all this technology seamlessly together to work together
because you want that that's the key to getting smart energy systems to work but it relies on
the brains in the box behind me that we can't even show you it's that top secret but again it's all
about reliability and that reliability extends to the networking in there there's the customers wifi
network that they use to obviously access that app but the actual communication between here and the
other systems is on its own dedicated network that not only stays in this house it actually
extends beyond the house to all of the houses on this development are seamlessly linked together
to share their energy consumption and almost work in unison with the grids well that's fantastic
gordon but it's always the show home is absolute perfection and that's always the first building
they send you around isn't it yeah there's always missing in there was the smell of fresh coffee
and bread we're off now to go and find out more about how these properties were built
the wiring behind the plasterboard to see what skills are needed to install it
and get unlock some of the other secrets from the project team about how this project
was delivered but as ever leave your comments below and we'll get back to as many as we can