Some might describe Alan Budgen as an expert in renewable energy: during the past few months alone, he built dozens of solar panels and heat pumps, to be installed on houses across Portsmouth.
But Budgen’s heat pumps aren’t made of metal and they’re significantly smaller than average. “I knew that trying to make a detailed heat pump, and to make a lot of them, would be really difficult,” he explains. “So everything was just printed on paper and then stuck on to what’s effectively a cardboard box. They look really effective, you wouldn’t have thought they were flat.”
This all makes much more sense when you realise they’re part of an installation at Southsea Model Village, a 1/12th scale village built in 1956. Commissioned by renewable energy experts Good Energy, Sunshine Place was open for visitors for two weeks in April, with the aim of inspiring both members of the public and policymakers about what a sustainable future could look like.
