Ministers to look at eco-power homes scheme

A £505m project to turn thousands of houses into mini-power stations is to go before ministers in Cardiff and London for approval.

The Swansea Bay City Region scheme is targeting the construction of at least 3,300 such properties and the retrofitting of 7,000 others with green technology like solar panels, heat pumps and Tesla batteries.

This doesn’t mean they’ll be exporting surplus electricity to the grid all the time, but they will use far less energy than more conventional properties at the very least.

The new and retrofitted homes are for Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.

The project is one of nine being taken forward as part of a £1.3bn city deal for the region.

The ruling body of the Swansea Bay City Region – the joint committee – approved the homes as power stations business case at a meeting on June 11.

All four councils have also given it the thumbs-up.

But final sign-off for the fiveyear project must come from the UK and Welsh Governments.

Speaking at the joint committee meeting, Neath Port Talbot Council leader Rob Jones said the project had been a long time in coming.

“I cannot emphasise enough how much the ball is in the court of the UK and Welsh Governments,” he said.

The project has been assessed by a city region group representing the voice of business, which stressed the importance of private-sector involvement.

The group’s chairman, Ed Tomp, said work would be needed to make it a truly regional project.

But he added: “This is a very ambitious project and a very innovative project. We are really supportive of it.”

Mr Tomp said there were currently “relatively modest resources to push it forward”, which had to be borne in mind.

New homes as power stations are being piloted on a small scale in Neath – using technology developed by an academic and industrial consortium called Specific, based at Swansea University – and in Burry Port, Carmarthenshire.

A retrofit scheme in Craigcefnparc, in the Swansea Valley, has resulted in energy bills for residents plummeting from an average of £71 in January to £3 for the first three weeks of April. The idea is that the concept is proved within the public sector and then rolled out to social housing providers and the private sector.