I am not an electricity expert. My expertise is in the fields of thermal energy usage within buildings and industries, and thermal energy recycling from wastewater.
I am a director of Applied Energy Ltd in New Zealand, working in the areas of Buildings/Water/Sustainability and a Chartered Member of Engineering New Zealand.
My career has seen me working in both New Zealand and overseas in UK, Spain, Holland, Italy and Germany.
My core discipline is a mechanical engineer with more than 30 years’ experience in the following:
• Building services design - HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning), water services, building thermal modelling
• Wastewater services within urban areas – wastewater treatment and reuse, using wastewater as a source of thermal energy
• Sustainability – Cities of the future, green building design, sustainable water use
I regularly speak at international conferences (over 20 conferences in 14 countries to date) and been invited to contribute to reports for the UK Govt, United Nations Environment Programme and Water Environment Federation in the USA.
My specialty, an area in which I have built an international reputation, is using the thermal energy capacity of wastewater for heating/cooling buildings. “In an era of changing climates, Cities all over the world are increasingly struggling to cope with heating and cooling energy demands from buildings and industries whilst at the same time reducing energy consumptions and managing loads on electrical networks. Wastewater flows are a huge thermal energy resource which is largely ignored yet has been proven to allow buildings to transition away from using fossil fuels for heating/cooling by transitioning to heatpumps whilst allowing these systems to operate up to twice as efficiently as air based systems, thus helping manage loads on the city electrical networks. Using this thermal resource, and the below ground infrastructure which is already there makes really good economic and environmental sense.”