There often tends to be some mutterings in the market when a new product or project receives almost universal acclaim as the the trailblazer of its type. Such is the case for BedZed, the housing scheme everyone quotes when it comes to environmentally sound development.
The biomass system hasn't worked, the carpers have claimed. Well that may be true to a degree they're sorting that out, architect Bill Dunster tells me. A new biomass CHP system is due to be installed at the Surrey site in the the next few months. "We've got one coming that's fab and that works," Dunster says. "It means that all the things we said we would do we've done. Everything else has worked."
The biomass experience is at BedZed is an instructive one for others looking at microgeneration. "Part of the problem (with the first system) was the sheer length of time taken to sort out all the defects in the district heating distribution," Dunster says. "It's quite a fiddle." The unit itself was unreliable, he adds. "When it worked it worked beautifully. Unfortunately it was down as much as it was up."
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