Sustainable Housing Development Reaches New Milestone

Sustainable Housing Development Reaches New Milestone

19 December 2014 – A sustainable housing development in Hastings has reached a new milestone, with the first of eleven solar PV equipped new-builds complete and open as a show home.

The housing development, a joint project between Horvath Homes, Unison and Hastings District Properties Limited (owned by Hastings District Council), is trialling sustainable living through ‘distributed generation’ technology.

With twelve homes in total, one existing property is being retro-fitted, whilst eleven new homes are being built using solar panels and, in some cases, an energy storage system.

Unison Chief Executive, Ken Sutherland, says it’s great to have one of the new-builds complete.

“We can now start to gather data which will provide Unison with first-hand experience of the operation, performance and potential impact these technologies may have on the electricity distribution network.”

As with the show home, each of the twelve homes will be fitted with a ZEN 4.0 kW solar photovoltaic system, comprising of 16 rooftop solar panels.

“A typical New Zealand household consumes around 20 kWh of electricity per day.

“On average, these systems should generate around 14.2kWh per day, with the highest generation occurring in summer months.”

The ZEN Freedom PowerBank energy storage systems contain 10 kWh of lithium ion battery storage.

“Some generation will obviously be consumed directly by the householder, a portion will charge the battery storage and any excess generation will be exported to the grid, at a buy-back price determined by individual retailers.”

The second home is set to be complete early in the New Year, and the rest will follow throughout the year.

Unison is positioned to obtain a number of learnings from the project, which will help inform future development and investment decisions relating to its network.

“As more of the homes are completed, we will start to see the effects from multiple solar and energy storage systems in a compact area on the network.

“There are a lot of different scenarios we want to test throughout this project, so we anticipate up to three years of data collection once the twelve homes are complete and occupied.”

An alternative technology, involving high-tech micro inverters, will be used when retrofitting the existing home, to analyse the differences in performance.

Under a standard centralised inverter solar system, overall generation performance is determined by the lowest performing solar module.

“This means that though only a small section of a solar panel may be shaded from the sunlight, there would be significant impacts on the overall performance of the system as a result.

“With high-tech micro inverter technology, the output from each solar panel is combined, therefore enhancing productivity and overcoming this limitation.”

The concept of sustainable living, through solar generated energy, is still very much in its infancy in New Zealand and a topic of real interest at present.

The knowledge gained from the project will help Unison determine how, in the future, it could accommodate emerging new technologies, whilst continue to provide high quality services to customers.

Horvath Homes Director, Adam Horvath, says the project is very exciting for the business, as it aligns with their aspirations of constructing minimum six star homes under the Homestar™ rating system.

“Sustainable living is a topic that’s really under the radar in New Zealand at the moment.

“With Unison’s support in equipping these new builds with solar PV systems, combined with our use of sustainable building practices, we are hoping to deliver on a whole new level in regards to affordable, energy efficient housing – these homes could reach eight stars.”

Peter Snelling, Chair of Hastings District Properties Limited is delighted to partner with Unison and Horvath Homes on this project.

“It showcases high quality and sustainable housing.”

ENDS

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