A low Carbon development
Spring Farm Business Centre has excellent green credentials and aims to be a low carbon development. 84% of the site’s waste is recycled and micro-generation is used to supply a proportion of the centre’s electricity. Three wind turbines can be seen across the field silently producing green electricity. The turbines are away from the offices and cannot be heard.
In addition, as part of an ongoing commitment to the environment, work will shortly be commencing on a new ‘Zero Carbon’ building. This will be built using as many recycled materials as possible and will use ground source heat pumps to provide heat and photovoltaic solar panels to generate electricity. In addition, rainwater will be harvested to provide as much of the building’s water requirements as possible.
Wind turbines
Our commitment to lowering our carbon footprint has led to a great deal of investigation into the technology of harnessing the wind to generate power for the Spring Farm site. Many different factors were taken into account including the position of the turbines and the type of unit that would suit the environment on the Cheshire plain. Our experts also considered the wide variety of technologies available in the current marketplace and the possibility of upgrades to emerging technologies in the future.
During the early part of 2012 much discussion took place regarding planning and environmental impact. The local authority took a progressive view on the addition of turbines and gave the go-ahead for the first installation.
The whole project has been a great success. The wind turbines now supply the site with power and during off peak time feed power back into the national grid. The turbines create minimal maintenance and can be monitored remotely to achieve maximum efficiency. The turbines themselves are placed in the fields around the Spring Farm Business Centre and can't be seen from the road or Spring Farm itself. They are virtually silent and have underground cables that feed the power back to central distribution units that supply the offices and the national grid.
Infrastructure investment
Ground Source Heating
Spring Farm Business Centre invested heavily in the relatively new technology of recovering heat from the ground (Ground Source Heating)
Extracting energy from the ground to heat a building is a sustainable use of the Earth’s natural resources, it reduces fuel bills and has a dramatic effect in lowering carbon emissions. Ground Source Heating is made possible because, only a few meters below the ground the temperature of the sub-soil is a constant 11°c throughout the whole year. This energy is being harnessed to provide heating throughout the Spring Farm development.
The benefits of ground source heating systems include:
- On average, 75% free renewable energy
- Fixed and stable energy costs
- Lower carbon emissions
- Constant heat 24 hours a day
- Fuels both hot water and heating
- Reversible to provide cooler temperatures in summer
An invisible source of power only meters below the surface
Sola power
Spring Farm Business Centre have embraced the technology of solar power. The decision was taken to undertake a considerable investment in highly efficient solar panels to be mounted on the utility building around the site.
The photovoltaic (PV) cells, which turn sunlight into electricity are a silent and virtually invisible addition to the many innovative solutions we have incorporated into the Spring Farm site. As with the wind turbines any excess power can be fed back into the national electricity supply.
The technology behind solar is relatively old, despite their futuristic appeal, but while the basics are the same the efficiency of solar panels has improved greatly in recent years.