Lord Redesdale
Main Page: Lord Redesdale (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Marland
I am glad that that finds favour with your Lordships. As on a previous occasion, I am grateful to Wikipedia for supplying this valuable information. It states:
“Voltage optimisation is an electrical energy saving technique which is installed in series with the mains electricity supply to give an optimum supply voltage for the site's equipment”—
in other words, as has been done in No. 10, to which the noble Baroness rightly pointed, and in our department, where we have put in this optimisation technique for reducing our own electricity demand. Therefore, it is very worthy of consideration. The problem with it is that it does not have a universal remit and is not necessarily applicable for domestic use. However, we would certainly encourage all commercial property to use it.
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, will the Minister also encourage the development and use of direct-current ring mains in office buildings? This would mean that transformers could be done away with and inverters placed on the tops of buildings to be air-cooled, which would dramatically reduce the amount of energy. The problem with all new technologies is making sure that they meet the energy ratings. I hope that EEDO will look at this, because the department has an obligation under the Climate Change Act 2008 to bring down the amount of emissions coming from the built environment; last year, they went up.
Lord Marland
This is already turning into a very technical Question. My noble friend asks a very relevant question: how can we aggregate electricity usage and reduce it by a central technique? That is what the eco-design directive from the EU is encouraging. It is looking at this as an efficiency measure as we speak and I am hopeful that the outcome will be positive.