On-site renewables

On-site renewable energy generation provides a building - or group of buildings - with all or part of its electricity, heating or cooling from renewable energy sources that are located within the boundaries of its site.

There are a number of other terms with slightly different meanings that are used in the same context as onsite renewables.  These are micro-renewables, micro-generation and buildings integrated renewables.

Increasingly, building developments have to meet planning requirements to source a certain minimum percentage of total forecast energy demand from onsite renewable energy generation. Government policy is that all new housing will be zero carbon by 2016, driving the installation of increasing amounts of onsite renewables.

Onsite renewable energy technologies include:

• Biomass or wood-fuelled-fired room stoves, boilers, and combined heat and power plants that produce both heat and electricity
• Small and micro-hydropower plants that generate electricity
• Solar photovoltaic roof panels and building façades producing electricity
• Solar water heating panels
• Heat pumps, powered by electricity and using the ground, water or the air as source for providing space and water heating or cooling.
• Building and pole-mounted wind turbines

Onsite renewables often means small-scale equipment fitted within the building, but not always. For example, onsite renewable energy generation on a large mixed-use development site could include a large biomass-fired CHP plant and its own heat and electricity distribution networks, or utility-sized wind turbines on the site supplying a proportion of the site’s electrical demand.