Welsh Government support for our innovative Bridgend housing development
Wales & West Housing has secured £839,000 of Welsh Government innovation funding towards the cost of a Bridgend pilot scheme to build homes capable of generating their own energy.
Work is due to start on 14 new homes on land to the west of Bryn Bragl, Bridgend, early next year and is expected to take 12 months to complete.
The development is the first housing scheme in Wales to follow the design of the innovative Solcer House at Stormy Down near Bridgend, which was designed and built by the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University.
Work on the scheme of one bedroom apartments and two and four bedroom houses is expected to start later this year.
The Solcer House was Wales’ first low cost energy positive house to generate more heat and electricity than it uses over a year. Like the Solcer House, the new WWH homes will incorporate the latest energy efficient and renewable technologies. It is expected that residents moving into the new homes could see a 90 per cent drop in their household bills as the homes should generate more electricity than they actually use.
Some of the key technologies being used in the homes include:
- Roofs made of photo voltaic (solar) panels instead of tiles
- Lithium ion batteries which store electricity generated by the sun which can be used by householders at night
- Air source heat pumps which use heat from the air to power the house’s heating and hot water system
- Steel wall panels (Transpired Solar Collectors (TSC), on the south-facing exterior wall which gather free heat from the sun
- Energy-efficient double-glazed windows and doors, thermal insulated walls and LED lighting
“This is an exciting pilot project for Wales & West Housing and we hope the homes in Bridgend will lead the way for more homes to be built this way.”
Shayne Hembrow, Deputy Chief Executive at WWH
Shayne Hembrow, Deputy Chief Executive at WWH, said: “Innovation in energy efficiency and renewable technologies for the home are getting more and more advanced and effective. The additional funding from the Innovative Housing Programme means that the homes we build in Bridgend will have the most modern technology available to us. For the people who will live in them, the houses will be cheap to run with very low or virtually zero energy bills depending on their energy usage.”
“We want to make sure that even though the technologies we fit in these houses will be ultra-modern, the controls will be simple and easy for the householders to use.”
“Being a mix of houses and apartments, the Bryn Bragl development will give us the chance to see monitor how different-sized households can use the technologies to save money on their energy bills and reduce fuel poverty.”
“This is an exciting pilot project for Wales & West Housing and we hope the homes in Bridgend will lead the way for more homes to be built this way.”
The Bryn Bragl scheme is one of 10 projects in Wales sharing £43million in the second phase of the Welsh Government’s three-year Innovative Housing Programme. The grant of £839,000 brings the total of Welsh Government investment in the scheme to £2.1 million with a further £1 million of Wales & West Housing investment.
Rebecca Evans, Welsh Government Housing and Regeneration Minister said: “It is clear that if the scale and pace of house-building is to increase significantly, traditional approaches are unlikely to deliver on their own. Done the right way, we have an opportunity to build high quality, near zero carbon homes, capturing and boosting the skills and expertise within the Welsh construction and manufacturing industries.”
