Our Story

The built environment in the EU is responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of Greenhouse Gas emissions. The Energy House 2:0 project is a facility that will help bring innovative products that tackle decarbonisation of our homes to market quicker and at lower cost.

The journey started in 2010, when the University of Salford developed the original Salford Energy House. The laboratory facility contained a Victorian House in a climate-controlled chamber and provided a new way to understand how products in our homes performed.

The approach allowed innovative companies to understand how their products performed quicker and at lower cost than had previously been possible. By controlling the conditions of the house, it allowed the team to conduct repeatable experiments, providing detailed data at the whole-house level. The facility was designed to address the essential UK retrofit challenge.

Then in late 2015, Professor Will Swan and Dr Richard Fitton, who lead the original Energy House lab at the University of Salford, developed the Energy House 2:0 concept. This new facility aimed to address the global issue of decarbonising homes.

The Challenge

Our original facility the Salford Energy House was a high risk venture in 2010. However we discovered it addressed a major gap in helping businesses and other stakeholders quickly understand how innovations could be applied by allowing us to conduct repeatable experiments. We took the lessons from Salford Energy House and looked at how they might be applied to the global problem.

It was important that we worked closely with business, other research institutes and Greater Manchester Combined Authority to help refine the concept. We kept an open dialogue with interested parties and build a strong community around the idea. We didn’t have a clear idea of the funding pot by we had a well established concept and stakeholder engagement when the funding opportunity arose.

It was a big project that carried a lot of risk and required good communication. Strong project management was vital to ensure effective engagement with funders and match funding partners. It was important that we recognised the risks, address the detail and communication. A project of this size took a lot of time and required patience to build confidence and a coalition around the project.

It was an ambitious and exciting project, so managing and exploiting the excitement that goes with that was crucial. The important things is for the project to be sustainable and drive benefit for the UK. This can only be achieved if people are aware of the capabilities and opportunities a project like this presents.

Our Solution

The Energy House 2:0 goes one step further than the original concept. It allows for a much wider range of temperatures and conditions to be tested (covering 95% o the populated globe), as well as provide the ability to build any type of domestic or small commercial property within the chamber, rather than a single property typical of the UK. The project proposal was submitted for European Regional Development Agency funding in 2017 and was funded in 2018.

Working with partners Bowmer and Kirkland, AECOM and NG Bailey, the team at Salford developed the £16 million project, which was completed in early 2022. The site will provide an international focus for improving the performance of the domestic and small commercial buildings. It will show the UK taking leadership in not only driving down CO2 emissions, but also supporting rapid innovation in the sector

Last year the team worked with four consortia of businesses which demonstrated innovation in the field of domestic energy, pushing the boundaries with the aim of decarbonising property. The work explored new materials, new ways of building, new types of heating systems and controls, and the integration of smart technology, all within a controlled environment. This approach will allow the University of Salford and innovative businesses to understand how these products and systems come together to create our homes of the future and understand their real-world performance.

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