The off-grid farmhouse in South Wales is SSE’s latest flagship project. SSE installed a variety of renewable technologies on the remote site - which is not connected to the electricity, gas, or water grids - to both showcase and monitor the performance of the technologies.
The farmhouse has been equipped with Solar PV panels on the roof to generate energy, batteries in the basement to store energy, as well as thermal storage and metering technology to help the family to manage their energy use. The site also features a biomass boiler which uses locally-sourced wood as fuel, and grey water harvesting technology which recycles rainwater for domestic use.
Helping homes to become more energy efficient is an important area of work for SSE and this project will enable the Davies family to cut their energy consumption by 50%. This will be achieved by the efficient performance of the new technology on site as well as significant behaviour changes made by the family.
The family will be able to monitor their energy use and the amount of energy produced or stored by the renewable technologies by viewing a computer tablet provided by SSE.
This project will also enable SSE to gain a real insight into the performance levels of the various renewable technologies as well as how people live and interact with those technologies in their everyday lives.
This project follows other SSE projects at the forefront of innovation in sustainable technologies including the zero-carbon homes at GreenWatt Way in Berkshire, integrated demand management as part of our NINES project in Scotland and the ECO-Island partnership on the Isle of Wight.