Powering the green technology focus
SELECT Member reveals how they helped bring this year’s Green Home Festival to life by working on the cabling for the outdoor event highlighting renewables and low-carbon living
SELECT Member firm DMH Electrical Services was the power behind this year’s Green Home Festival in Edinburgh in mid-August when it provided the cabling for its first outdoor event.
The Green Home Festival is organised by the Construction Industry Collective Voice (CICV) – made up of 29 trade associations, professional services bodies and companies, including SELECT – and is part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It provides a week of shows highlighting renewables, sustainability and low-carbon living, which combine advice with hands-on demonstrations of products and technology.
This year’s event ran from 12-16 August and attracted a record audience.
More than 500 people attended the discussions on a wide range of topical subjects, including heat pump myth-busting, renewables funding, the future of retrofit, an introduction to Passivhaus and the future of community heat networks. A mobile heat pump van was also one of the star attractions of the week, with experts on hand to answer consumer questions about the technology.
The past two Green Home Festivals had been held in the offices of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Charlotte Square, but this year’s event was moved to a marquee over the road in the Charlotte Square Gardens to accommodate the increased demand for tickets.
David Harris, MD of DMH Electrical Services and Chair of SELECT’s Glasgow branch – and current Depute Vice President of SELECT – volunteered to help get the CICV’s marquee connected to mains electricity to power the audio visual equipment for the shows.
David said: “It was a relatively straightforward job as the gardens had an existing power supply pillar “That meant it was a case of running two cables from the existing power point and then breaking that down to some 13A sockets, one cable for the marquee for laptops and the projector and the other for the mobile heat pump van.
“Health and safety issues were the main concern so we had to make sure that cables were routed away from public footpaths and put through areas that the public didn’t have accessto. The armoured cables were marked off so that they clearly were visible to everyone. As it was summer, there was no need for lighting in the evening, and as it was just a single-phase power supply, it was basically a plug-and-play arrangement.
“We have wide experience in the hire, installation, maintenance and repair of temporary power and lighting systems to the construction industry, so we were happy to provide our services for free to CICV as the issues they were covering were of great interest to us and our industry.”
The festival was officially launched on Monday 12 August by Acting Minister for Climate Action, Dr Alasdair Allan MSP.
He said: “The climate crisis is among the greatest global challenges of our time. We know that our homes and workplaces account for around a fifth of Scotland’s emissions. Our building stock is relatively old, and the legacy of poor energy efficiency contributes both to emissions and fuel poverty.
“We are at a pivotal point right now in the heat transition. We must improve the efficiency of existing buildings and switch to clean heating systems, such as heat pumps and heat networks, and do so in a way that is in line with a just transition.”
ENJOY THE HIGHLIGHTS
Details of all the shows from this year’s event are now available on the Green Home Festival website at www.greenhomefestival.co.uk, where you can also find presentations from selected events, which are free to download.
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