Overview of the System

The Park Ecovillage Trust at Findhorn and the Energy System Research Unit (ESRU) at the University of Strathclyde have been working in an Energy Technology Partnership (ETP) project. The overall objective of this project is to progress the development of a new, low cost and low carbon optimised, integrated energy service for mini-districts.

This innovative project is to build upon existing knowledge acquired on a previous EU-funded project, FP7 Origin. The ORIGIN project focusses on control of existing assets, whereas the ETP project aims to develop algorithms and system designs for future buildings. 

Main objectives of the ETP:

To deploy a low-cost monitoring and control systems to West Whins
To model and test the new system
To model and create a framework for next-generation systems using North Whins as a case study.
To trial the smart system on West Whins

Findhorn

Findhorn is a small ecovillage located at the North of Scotland. It has three existing 225kW wind turbines and also 75kW of solar distributed around the Park. Based on the monitored data, Findhorn is a net importer of electricity. This means that it imports more electricity than it exports into the grid in the period of a year. The underlying objective any smart-grid or eco-village should be to reduce grid imports and increase self-consumption.

Figure 1: Findhorn Location on a Map of the North of Scotland

West Whins

In this project we will be focusing on the ‘West Whins’ development at Findhorn ecovillage, completed in 2017. West Whins is a 6-flat affordable housing complex which is supplied by a central energy centre. A diagram of West Whins with the Energy Centre can be seen on Figure 2.

Energy Centre

14kW Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) for space heating and Direct Hot Water (DHW) supply.
550L DHW thermal store with sole purpose to supply domestic hot water of the 6 flats.
6 x 2.3m2 solar thermal panels which charge the DHW store.
35-40m2 floor space per housing unit.

Heat Pump (HP)

The system works with simple controls that switch the HP on whenever there is a demand from any dwelling.

It supplies the space heating on demand, containing a small 100L buffer to avoid short cycling and provide stability.
The HP also charges the top 70% (380L) of the thermal store with the use of an indirect heat exchanger.

Solar Thermal

The solar thermal system operation is triggered by the differential between the panel and the thermal measurement at the top of the solar section.

The output is fed directly through a coil heat exchanger at the bottom part (170L) of the thermal store.

Find out more about the hardware that is in place to monitor the West Whins' energy consumption here.

Figure 2 : Diagram of the different elements of West Whins system