In 2024/25 Scene collaborated with York Community Energy on a Community Energy Fund project (CEF) to assess the business case for the installation of a photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage system (BESS) at a new development in York. The development initially comprises 14 high-performance dwellings, ranging from 2 to 4 bedrooms. The properties will be owned and managed as a co-operative, with additional planned communal assets such as shared electrical vehicles (EV), a communal meeting and cooking space and further low-cost housing. The intended model is that whilst the PV is installed on some or all of the dwellings, the electrical connections are made at communal points, reducing the energy costs to the co-operative which can share savings with co-operative members according to their priorities.
Scene contributed to the energy modelling. The process was started with running a workshop session and attending meetings with co-operative members to understand their intentions for the buildings, how energy will be used and how it will be billed. This behavioural and occupancy detail was used to define heating and hot water control rules and combined with building thermal modelling to determine electrical heat demand profiles for each property across a year. The heat demand was supplemented by diverse appliance demand profiles and communal EV charging profiles to obtain a total demand profile for the site. A range of PV and BESS capacity scenarios was then modelled against the total demand profile in order to determine resulting annual energy savings. YCE took this data to develop the business case.
The optimisation of PV and BESS sizing opens up several funding routes for the additional decarbonisation measures. Prior to modelling, first-phase rooftops were assessed to comfortably accommodate 61kW of PV modules, with a 200kWh battery. This was found to reduce energy costs by 70% with payback after 17 years, but a reduced 43kW PV and 64kWh BESS installation results in better value for money with a 50% energy saving and a 13-year payback.