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Product category: Building Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
News Release from: Dulas
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial Team on 02 May 2007

Dulas: An ethical business success story

Dulas, a company that might just change the way you think about energy.

Quietly nestled in the hills of Mid Wales is an award winning Eco park, and on it, a renewable energy company which is celebrating 25 years in the industry Dulas Limited, a company celebrated by the Guardian as "a company that might just change the way you think about energy", evolved some 25 years ago as the engineering arm of the Centre for Alternative Technology, and today the company has similar ethics and goals - to innovate in the use of sustainable resources and renewable energy

And they do this to great effect.

Named after the nearby river, Dulas started life developing control systems for renewable energy generators in 1982.

In the mid nineteen-eighties Guy Watson, fuelled by Bob Geldof's Band Aid campaign, instigated the development of solar-powered blood banking facilities and operating theatre lights for use in conflict situations, aid camps and remote situations (Photo 1 Solar Vaccine Refrigerator in remote hospital, Ghana).

Guy and colleagues then went on to work on vaccine refrigeration systems, which now form a very significant part of the business.

Recent contracts include system specifications and logistics for solar-powered field lighting and our first order this month from "Safe Hands" for solar powered DVD players which will be used to educate African women about childbirth.

Dulas has for many years been supplying vaccine refrigerators and freezers to charities and aid organisations as part of polio and other immunisation programmes.

Incidentally, Guy is now the only remaining member of staff from the original 1980s crew.

With just five employees back then, the company has grown fast and now employs 46 people, mostly from engineering and low carbon building backgrounds.

The Dulas offices are no longer a shed on an old slate quarry, but two timber framed eco-buildings which show that this company is serious about renewables.

"The buildings are very energy efficient" said Andrew Rowbottom of Dulas , "they harness the passive energy from the sun to heat the building, harvest rain water for brown water applications, and use photovoltaics on the bike shed for electricity".

"We also buy renewable energy from the grid via Good Energy and encourage staff to use public transport, to cycle or walk to work" (Photo 2 and 3 Old premises and new Eco Park).

The non-fossil fuel obligation in 1989 spurred a move from smaller to large scale renewable energy projects and for Dulas this meant being at the forefront in terms of knowing how to implement renewable energy in the UK.

The company's wind energy arm found the UK's second ever wind farm site, Cemmaes, the first site ever to go to public inquiry.

(Photo 4: Cemmaes wind farm, the second ever UK wind turbine site).

Dulas are now a major player in the UK wind industry, a position achieved through partnership with the development company Airtricity, The Wind team employs some of the best environmental and planning experts in the UK, responsible for achieving 10% of the UK's total consented wind farms.

For Dulas, success is not measured in sales achievement alone.

They still pride themselves in harnessing their engineering experience and knowledge to make a positive impact in poorer and less-developed areas of the world, and to make a difference in the UK and in their local community.

From 1998 to 2002, Dulas hosted the Community Based Renewable Energy Project run by Ecodyfi.

The project enabled members of the community to buy shares in a community wind turbine, encouraged a local farmer to develop a hydro scheme on his land and helped several households to implement microgeneration technologies.

Dulas offered advice and worked on feasibility studies for the projects, as well as doing a lot of the installation work.

"It's fantastic that the Dyfi valley has such a strong, competitive player in the vital area of renewable energy, and that the company is able to maintain it's cooperative ethos and ethical stance", said Andy Rowland of Ecodyfi (Photo 5- Machynlleth Community Wind Turbine).

"Reaching our 25th birthday is a real milestone for Dulas, and it is an opportunity to take a step back and look at Dulas' role in Welsh renewables more generally," said Ian Draisey, a director at Dulas .

"We have worked tirelessly throughout Wales and the rest of the UK, implementing well established technologies such as PV, hydro and wind, but have also developed projects in the embryonic biomass industry" he said.

Dulas is quietly optimistic that the oversubscribed Welsh European grants funding pot WEBS [Wood Energy Business Scheme] will be topped up to help the nascent biomass market move onto the next level.

Wales is home to a considerable potential wood supply and the Welsh Assembly, in consultation with Brussels, is working out how to carry on the successful scheme in the so-called Objective 1 and Objective 2 regions which qualify for special and very generous regional EU grants.

"It would be a travesty if they stopped the scheme now because it has been so highly successful, and I'd be surprised if they did," said Draisey.

(Photo 6: Llanwyddn biomass ESCo).

Many buildings and homes in Wales are heated with oil, lpg and coal which means that large carbon savings can be made at low long-term costs.

Dulas biomass schemes typically sell heat at a competitive price to oil, making switching to the greener fuel a realistic proposition, especially given the potential conversion of existing supply networks.

Dulas set up an energy supply company (ESCo) at Llanwddyn where a 500 kW Compte boiler heats 29 homes, a community centre and a school from local woodchip supply.

The pioneering Llanwyddyn project can now be considered a qualified success and apart from reducing carbon and energy costs, one of the major benefits of the scheme has been the massive and very noticeable improvement in the air quality for Llanwddyn residents.

And Dulas' capability doesn't stop there, as Rod Edwards, senior engineer and Director of Dulas commented, "Wales is also home to a great deal of hydro projects and the company has a strong legacy in the hydro field".

Over the past 15 years the hydro department has grown from installing small domestic schemes in Wales to becoming one of the UK's leading hydro installers, being well known throughout the industry for troubleshooting and refurbishment of underperforming plants.

"Pant yr Afon and Croesor hydro schemes were built in the early 1900's to power the slate quarries around Blaenau Ffestiniog and operated for many decades".

"Pant yr Afon in particular was operating continuously for almost 100 years".

"We expect the recently rebuilt schemes to provide clean, renewable energy onto the national grid until the end of this century," said John Howarth, Hydro engineer at Dulas, who has worked with the company for the last ten years (Photo 7 and 8: Pant yr Afon old control system and new control system).

Surprisingly for a company with a multi-million pound turnover, Dulas is a modest organisation.

The company operates on a shareholder basis, where employees are the shareholders and a board of five directors is elected every year, with larger issues going to a company vote.

The company's achievements, both in terms of export success and innovation, have been recognised by the Queen, winning the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2004.

But times haven't always been easy.

(Photo 9: Guy and Rod receiving the Queen's Award for Innovation 2004).

Dulas is now facing an interesting time having to compete and work alongside large utility companies.

Awarded framework supplier status for the Low Carbon Building grants scheme in January by the DTI, their consortium is one of only seven companies supplying microgeneration renewables into public buildings.

As the UK main distributor of Kyocera and Fronius PV modules, Dulas has already built up a strong position in PV, especially in residential installations.

It boasts around 500 completed PV installations and has recently installed a custom-made glass-glass laminate solar installation of 7kW capacity at the Centre of Alternative Technology (Photo 10: New solar installation at The Centre for Alternative Technology)".

"Based on EST figures, we have around 40%, of the domestic scale PV market," said Jon Andrews who heads up the Dulas solar team".

"Now that we're a framework supplier we will be in the running for more large scale, public sector projects." Dulas is nicely pitted against only two other framework PV.

Phase 2 enquiries at Dulas have been running at around 100 a month and the company's marketing team is starting to work towards sustaining the surge of interest that followed the framework supplier nomination.

A wide range of institutions, from museums, individual schools, nature trusts and housing associations, to LEAs and health authorities, have all been attracted by the (GBP50 million) programme's generous grants and registered their interest with Dulas over the past few months".

"We hear a lot from facilities managers who tend to be mainly driven by cost savings but also corporate social responsibility," said the company's marketing co-ordinator Katy Tuxworth.

She added that the new Energy in Buildings Directive, which will lead to an energy rating for every building on the market post-2009, was also a driver.

The renewables sector is now very business-orientated.

There's a lot of government money available, dedicated to microgeneration and carbon savings.

The Dulas consortium "The Low Carbon Partnership" which includes partners Sundog Energy has addressed this problem by setting up a new business model.

This new model allows a few smaller installers to access the public buildings microgen money by bringing projects to Dulas".

"Dulas is a great company," said Guy Watson, of the Solar International department, "we have very strong ethical values, alongside a fierce ambition to succeed".

Over the past 25 years Dulas has gone from strength to strength, proving that innovation and intuition can win out against some much larger competitors in the rapidly changing global energy marketplace.

The company is a fine example of how having a beneficent ethos is not a handicap to success when the right skills, knowledge and attitude are in place.

In fact, it is an advantage.

The company continues to attract highly skilled workers from all over the World.

Give Dulas the opportunity to change the way you think about energy.

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