Current Energy Demand

A community energy audit determined the extent of the village's three main demand categories

Residential
Transportation
Commercial

Residential

Publicly available data was used to calculate the following aspects of Kinlochleven's residential demand

Space Heating

Hot Water

Electrical

Mobirise

Examining publicly available data from the Scottish property register, energy performance certificates (EPCs) were used to calculate the residential building demand. This included: space heating, hot water and “other” (electrical demand). There are 475 residential buildings in Kinlochleven and EPCs were available for 336 of the buildings (~70%). From the EPC data, the number of different dwelling types was determined and are outlined in the results table below.

Semi-detached/end-terrace housing is the predominant dwelling type. Their average size is 87 m2 with an average energy demand of ~440 kWh/m2. The EPC’s demonstrated that the dwellings in Kinlochleven had excessive energy demands, the average EPC rating was E which is below the national average of D [1]. 

From the results of the EPC's the total energy demand for residential dwellings in Kinlochleven is 17.5 GWh/year.

All of Kinlochleven's EPC data can be found on our downloads page.

Results from EPC Audit

Dwelling Type Number of HousesMean Size (m2)Mean Energy Use (MWh/year) Mean EPC Rating
Semi-detached2288737.2 E
Mid Terrace757136.0E
Detached3316162.5E
Ground/Mid Floor Flat825830.2E
Top Floor Flat575830.5D

Transportation

Transportation was analysed in the following categories

Private Vehicles

Council Vehicles

Public Transport

Tourism

From the energy audit the transportation demand of Kinlochleven has been determined using generic public behaviour profiles which have been scaled to the village’s population size. Kinlochleven is a commuter town for Fort William, with many residents travelling there on a daily basis for work.

An assumption was that the demographic of the town is aging and therefore it has been assumed that there will be an elderly contingent driving around the village on a daily basis. In addition to the residential transport demands, there are also commercial demands such as school buses that transport pupils from the surrounding area to the high school and council vehicles (e.g. bin lorries).

There are no petrol stations in the village, and residents rely on refuelling with petrol and diesel in either Fort William or Glencoe. From consultation with the Kinlochleven Community Trust, it’s been determined that there is one electric vehicle (EV) being used in the village.

The current fuel demand for vehicles was determined by applying an efficiency conversion factor of 4.2 to the proposed future electric vehicle energy demand calculated in the Electrifying Transport section. To calculate the conversion factor, the “real world” efficiency (in miles per kilowatt-hour) of new electric vehicles was averaged [2]. The average “real world” efficiency of combustion vehicles from 2010 (as this represents the average age of vehicles in the UK) was then determined [3]. This was achieved by considering the average quoted efficiency [4] and the average exaggeration of efficiency [5] of new cars sold in 2010.


Commercial 

A calculated audit of the space heating and electrical demand of commercial properties in Kinlochleven

School

Ice Factor

Hotels

Initially all commercial buildings in Kinlochleven were identified. Energy usage data for the Leven Centre (high school and library) and public toilets were publicly available and used directly. Where appropriate, ERSU's Generic Profiles scaled by floor area were used to estimate individual building demands. ESRU's Merit was used to generate demand profiles and then employed to combine all the commercial demand profiles with appropriate diversity factor.

A spreadsheet detailing the commercial building demand is available on the downloads page. This data can be summarised in the chart below which shows the commercial demand profile for a year. The higher demand in the summer can be attributed to influxes of tourists exploiting the outdoor recreational activities. The total commercial demand is 3.6 GWh/year and a has a peak demand of 1.2 MW.


Mobirise