Energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades were recently completed at a block of flats in Brighton, which are expected to deliver significant cost and carbon savings over the next 25-30 years.
The buildings are owned by Brighton Housing Trust and provide social housing for low-income households.
Built in the late 1960s, the properties were in need of some modernisation. BHESCo were engaged to complete a Retrofit Assessment for each flat within the housing block (twelve flats in total), recommending costed improvements and modelling the impact these would have on long-term energy costs and carbon emissions.
Our qualified Retrofit Assessor, Tim Beecher, carried out Trustmark approved Retrofit Assessments (RAs) under the PAS 2035:2019 standard at the time. This is a quality standards framework for assessing and carrying out retrofits in existing buildings. It involved doing detailed energy efficiency measurements and floor plans, processing and calculating the survey details to produce reports for each of the 12 flats at Cashman Lodge.
BHESCo worked with Alex Hunt from BG Retrofit who was the Retrofit Coordinator for this project. Once he received the retrofit assessment reports he was able to come up with a Retrofit Plan. Tim also did the modelling scenarios to produce the best improvement measures, in consultation with Alex and Brighton Housing Trust (BHT). This enabled the installation of the chosen retrofit measures using Trustmark approved Retrofit Installers.
The housing complex is comprised of three buildings, with each receiving a brand new 15.6kW solar panel array on the roof. The electricity generated from the solar panels will be shared equally between the flats using a new and innovative system called SolShare.
By splitting up the electricity from the SolShare system, each flat will enjoy the equivalent of a 3.9kWp solar array. It is estimated that each flat will benefit from 12-16kWh of free solar electricity each day, which should save £800-£1,000 for each flat, per year.
In addition to the introduction of solar power, brand new double-glazed windows were installed, with a U value of 1.4W/m2k.
Finally, some old cavity wall insulation that had failed was replaced by brand new EPS beads (Ecobead), which was to address an issue with thermal bridging in the kitchens of each flat.
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