National Energy Foundation
The National Energy Foundation (NEF) is an independent British charity, established to improve the use of energy in buildings. Aims The charity aims to ''improve the use of energy in buildings''. This statement simplified the earlier stated mission to mobilise individuals, businesses and communities to make their contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions through energy efficiency and use of sustainable energy sources (notably renewable energy) to maintain affordable energy services and combat global climate change. Activities NEF was founded in 1988 by Milton Keynes Development Corporation to preserve for the future benefit of the UK public some of the energy initiatives that had been undertaken within the new city. Its initial projects included extending a technical home energy label (known as the Milton Keynes Energy Cost Index – MKECI) into a more generally applicable home energy rating called the National Home Energy Rating (NHER), and technical energy monit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charitable Organization
A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, Religion, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definition of a charitable organization (and of charity) varies between countries and in some instances regions of the country. The Charity regulators, regulation, the tax treatment, and the way in which charity law affects charitable organizations also vary. Charitable organizations may not use any of their funds to profit individual persons or entities. (However, some charitable organizations have come under scrutiny for spending a disproportionate amount of their income to pay the salaries of their leadership). Financial figures (e.g. tax refund, revenue from fundraising, revenue from sale of goods and services or revenue from investment) are indicators to assess the financial sustainability of a charity, especially to charity evaluators. This ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Duke Of Edinburgh's Award
The Duke of Edinburgh's Award (commonly abbreviated DofE) is a youth awards programme founded in the United Kingdom in 1956 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, that has since expanded to 144 nations. The awards recognise adolescents and young adults for completing a series of self-improvement exercises modelled on Kurt Hahn's solutions to his " Six Declines of Modern Youth". In the United Kingdom, the programme is run by The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, a royal charter corporation. A separate entity, The Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Foundation, promotes the award abroad and acts as a coordinating body for award sponsors in other nations, which are organised into 62 National Award Authorities and a number of Independent Operators. Award sponsors in countries outside the United Kingdom may title their awards Duke of Edinburgh's Awards, though the recognition also operates under a variety of other names in countries without a historic link to the British monarchy, or th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mary Archer
Mary Doreen Archer, Baroness Archer of Weston-super-Mare ( Weeden; born 22 December 1944) is a British scientist specialising in solar power conversion. She is married to Jeffrey Archer, a former chairman of the Conservative Party. Early life and education Mary Weeden was born in Epsom, Surrey, in December 1944. She was the younger daughter of Harold N. Weeden, a chartered accountant, and Doreen Cox. She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, before reading chemistry at St Anne's College, Oxford. She went on to study for a PhD in physical chemistry at Imperial College London. Her thesis was titled "Heterogeneous catalysis of inorganic substitution reactions" and was submitted in 1968. Career Archer was a junior research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1968 to 1971. She was then a temporary lecturer in chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford for the 1971/72 academic year. After Oxford, she worked as a scientific researcher under George Porter at the Royal Institution ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bletchley
Bletchley is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated in the south-west of Milton Keynes, and is split between the civil parishes of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford and West Bletchley. Bletchley is best known for Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain's World War II codebreaking organisation, and now a major tourist attraction. The National Museum of Computing is also located on the Park. History Origins and early modern history The town name is Anglo-Saxon and means ''Blæcca's clearing''. It was first recorded in manorial rolls in the 12th century as ''Bicchelai'', then later as ''Blechelegh'' (13th century) and ''Blecheley'' (14th–16th centuries). Just to the south of Fenny Stratford, there was Romano-British town, '' M'' on either side of Watling Street, a Roman road. Bletchley was originally a minor village on the outskirts of Fenny Stratford, of lesser importance than Water Eaton. Fenny Stratford fell into decline from the Engl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Condensing Boiler
Condensing boilers are water heaters typically used for heating systems that are fueled by gas or oil. When operated in the correct circumstances, a heating system can achieve high efficiency (greater than 90% on the higher heating value) by condensing water vapour found in the exhaust gases in a heat exchanger to preheat the circulating water. This recovers the latent heat of vaporisation, which would otherwise have been wasted. The condensate is sent to a drain. In many countries, the use of condensing boilers is compulsory or encouraged with financial incentives. For the condensation process to work properly, the return temperature of the circulating water must be around or below, so condensing boilers are often run at lower temperatures, around or below, which can require larger pipes and radiators than non condensing boilers. Nevertheless, even partial condensing is more efficient than a traditional non-condensing boiler. Operational Principle In a conventional boiler, fue ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Commission For New Towns
English Partnerships (EP) was the national regeneration agency for England, performing a similar role on a national level to that fulfilled by regional development agencies on a regional level. On 1 December 2008 its powers passed to a successor body, the new Homes and Communities Agency. It was responsible for land acquisition and assembly and major development projects, alone or in joint partnership with private sector developers. It was particularly active in major regeneration areas such as the Thames Gateway and in expansion areas such as Milton Keynes, where the Deputy Prime Minister (acting as Environment Minister) removed planning from local control and appointed them as the statutory planning authority. It was a non-departmental public body funded through the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), and was previously by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (the predecessor department to CLG). Structure English Partnerships was legally two entirely in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Photovoltaics
Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially used for electricity generation and as photosensors. A photovoltaic system employs solar modules, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. PV installations may be ground-mounted, rooftop-mounted, wall-mounted or floating. The mount may be fixed or use a solar tracker to follow the sun across the sky. Photovoltaic technology helps to mitigate climate change because it emits much less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. Solar PV has specific advantages as an energy source: once installed, its operation generates no pollution and no greenhouse gas emissions, it shows scalability in respect of power needs and silicon has large availability in the Earth's crust, although other materials required in PV system m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Light Tube
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 terahertz, between the infrared (with longer wavelengths) and the ultraviolet (with shorter wavelengths). In physics, the term "light" may refer more broadly to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not. In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light. The primary properties of light are intensity, propagation direction, frequency or wavelength spectrum and polarization. Its speed in a vacuum, 299 792 458 metres a second (m/s), is one of the fundamental constants of nature. Like all types of electromagnetic radiation, visible light propagates by massless elementary particles called photons that represents the quanta of electromagnetic field, and can be analyzed as both waves and par ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brise Soleil
''Brise soleil'', sometimes ''brise-soleil'' (; ), is an architectural feature of a building that reduces heat gain within that building by deflecting sunlight. More recently, vertical Brise soleil have become popular. Both systems allow low-level sun to enter a building in the mornings, evenings and during winter but cut out direct light during summer. Architecture ''Brise-soleil'' can comprise a variety of permanent sun-shading structures, ranging from the simple patterned concrete walls popularized by Le Corbusier in the Palace of Assembly to the elaborate wing-like mechanism devised by Santiago Calatrava for the Milwaukee Art Museum or the mechanical, pattern-creating devices of the Institut du Monde Arabe by Jean Nouvel. In the typical form, a horizontal projection extends from the sunside facade of a building. This is most commonly used to prevent facades with a large amount of glass from overheating during the summer. Often louvers are incorporated into the shade to p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wood Pellets
Pellet fuels (or pellets) are biofuels made from compressed organic matter or biomass. Pellets can be made from any one of five general categories of biomass: industrial waste and co-products, food waste, agricultural residues, energy crops, and untreated lumber. Wood pellets are the most common type of pellet fuel and are generally made from compacted sawdust and related industrial wastes from the milling of lumber, manufacture of wood products and furniture, and construction. Other industrial waste sources include empty fruit bunches, palm kernel shells, coconut shells, and tree tops and branches discarded during logging operations. So-called "black pellets" are made of biomass, refined to resemble hard coal and were developed to be used in existing coal-fired power plants. Pellets are categorized by their heating value, moisture and ash content, and dimensions. They can be used as fuels for power generation, commercial or residential heating, and cooking. Pellets are extremely ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Solar Hot Water
Solar water heating (SWH) is heating water by sunlight, using a solar thermal collector A solar thermal collector collects heat by absorbing sunlight. The term "solar collector" commonly refers to a device for solar hot water heating, but may refer to large power generating installations such as solar parabolic troughs and sola .... A variety of configurations are available at varying cost to provide solutions in different climates and latitudes. SWHs are widely used for residential and some industrial applications (For example: in Israel). A sun-facing collector heats a working fluid that passes into a storage system for later use. SWH are active (pumped) and passive (Natural convection, convection-driven). They use water only, or both water and a working fluid. They are heated directly or via light-concentrating mirrors. They operate independently or as hybrids with electric or gas heaters. In large-scale installations, mirrors may concentrate sunlight into a smaller c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Geothermal Heat Pump
A ground source heat pump (also geothermal heat pump) is a heating/cooling system for buildings that uses a type of heat pump to transfer heat to or from the ground, taking advantage of the relative constancy of temperatures of the earth through the seasons. Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) – or geothermal heat pumps (GHP) as they are commonly termed in North America – are among the most energy-efficient technologies for providing HVAC and water heating, using far less energy than can be achieved by burning a fuel in a boiler/furnace or by use of resistive electric heaters. Efficiency is given as a coefficient of performance (CoP) which is typically in the range 3 – 6, meaning that the devices provide 3 – 6 units of heat for each unit of electricity used. Setup costs are higher than for other heating systems due to the requirement to install ground loops over large areas or drill bore holes, and for this reason air source heat pumps are often used instead. Thermal prope ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |