Energenie / Thermodynamics Panels Loses Judicial Review

[Worcester]

The saga continues !!

Energie brought a judicial review against MCS over their classification of thermodynamic panels. They lost

For the details see here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2013/3026.pdf or Energie Est LDA, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change & Anor [2013] EWHC 3026 (Admin) (10 October 2013)

and for MCS's comments see here: Microgeneration Certification Scheme - Microgeneration Certification Scheme Press Release: MCS Statement on the Judicial Review - Thursday 10th October 2013

 

[The Solar King]

What is interesting is that the door is not completely closed on this technology. It will however need either a new MCS standard or an addition to the heat pump standard.

The question of real life performance is stil unresolved. This and meeting the heat pump standard are what may finally kill it.

 

[BruceB]

Having been proof read by so many lawyers and clerks, it is unusual to see a mistake at para 81 where they have a date wrong.
I have not been following this case, but wonder what Mr Justice Blair's final point is at para 89: is he inviting an application for permission to appeal or just one about costs?

 

[Gavin A]

silly to put this challenge through, they really should have gone about this in the right way from the start.

The technology itself is a great technology in the right situation, the only reason it's not accredited is that there is neither a testing standard, nor testing facilities available to properly test it. I believe they were trying to just use the standard heat pump tests, but this would have been completely wrong as it wouldn't have allowed for the impact of either wind, or sunlight on performance, and this panel relies on wind and sunlight to give it the COP figures that should be considerably higher than for any ASHP in the right location and used for the right purpose.

I understand these issues have now been pretty much hammered out, but still wouldn't expect to see a standard or products tested to that standard on the market for a year or so due to how long this sort of thing takes to get through all the hoops.

We've now paid for our first unit (2nd generation magix thermodynamic box), and should be getting a monitored system running over this winter at one of our teams houses hopefully set up to run off excess day time solar PV generation to trickle heat into the hot water and to some degree the heating in day time - matched with a dunsley yorkshire wood burner with back boiler to do the bulk of the heating, plus the existing gas boiler to top that up if needed.