Energy Producing Marvel: Pattaya’s Eco Village

The Horse Shoe Point’s Eco Village project near Pattaya City is an engineering marvel with world class energy efficient homes generating carbon credit income, the ability to sell electrical power to EGAT, the Thai electrical monopoly, and an ability to recycle water within the community.  Recently the model homes were open for inspection. The beautiful two stories, mid priced homes which are panelized were completed in less than four months. The post and beam is made in a Thai factory.

Mr.  Srifuengfung  and  his  team  received a grant  from  the Danish government to build energy efficient homes for middle  and  upper  class  residents,  with the  first  houses  built  for  demonstration purposes. Eco Village introduces ecological solutions from energy efficient water recycling to bio mass and special generators that makes and store electricity energy via VSPP very small power plan. 

 “We called energy by using Solar PV, Solar Thermo and converting algae, biomass and horse manure into usable, efficient energy,” said Mr. Srifuengfung

Eco Village utilizes the latest advancements in double paned, low energy, Argon gas filled windows and doors. The houses are erected within a matter of days from lightweight panels which are finished with exterior insulation finishing systems. The thicker the walls the more heat is held inside causing higher cooling bills in this climate so the walls are thin.

Light  weight  system  EIF  system  is sprayed on the exterior, and then painted with  a  special  paint  that  reflects  heat. Interior walls consist of gypsum with EPF foam applied in the middle between walls.

This reduces the air conditioning required by half as well as electricity consumption. Each  room  needs  only  8,000BTUs of energy for  the air conditioning unit which  uses  variable  speed  that  can help  the compressor blow out. We have smart  systems  that  regulate  energy  by having  marked  control  on  the  lighting and air conditioning set at three kilo watt maximum per unit so the system will cut down  the energy drain on appliances or electrical equipment  that are not important. The system is programmable.

“You can set it from a far with a mobile  phone  by  each  task  like  increasing the  lighting  or  decreasing  ambient  temperature in the house or even turning on the music,” explained Mr. Srifuengfung.

 “If I am on the island, then I will look at what available like wind, solar and bio mass. Then I will design the resort to be very energy efficient first, but now days most developers don’t. They  just  go  in and build then they find out they have to bring  in  a  lot  to  generate  power  to  just keep people cool and  light up  the room, the farsighted developer said.

“Less than 10 years after this project is completed it will pay for its self. Ideally this should be about five to seven years. That’s more bankable, but I think not only we sell the electricity and be self sufficient; you can also sell carbon credits up front. We get a lot of carbon credit in this project. The utility bill at the upper middle house will be less than a half of a conventional house, he said.

Mr. Srifuengfung said, “At Eco Village everything is recycled. We have to make this entire house competitive so you have the house that generates income from Carbon Credits and electric power sales, not a mortgage.”

“We  introduce  this  for  community living  because  then  the  community  can benefit  from  this  rather  than  the  house being  dependant  on  using  depleting  resources. It creates resources,” he added.

 “To make  it cost effective not only do we  have  to  have  twenty  houses,  but the  design  has  to  be  tailored  to  the  resources  that are available. Like here we have a lot of cut wood waste, horse manure and food waste. We can produce bio gas depending on what we have for fuel that is appropriate. For the long term we are using a bio reactor that we can use on a mass scale. The algae is a fasting growing bio mass, and you can control what you can have so it has 20 %  oil and the rest can be protein and mostly carbohydrate.   The carbohydrate you can generate and ferment  to make bio gas,  the oil you  can make  bio  diesel  and  the waste you  make  fertilizer,”  Mr.  Srifuengfung explained.

 “Renewable energy, recycle the water system all the water here gets used. All water including waste water gets reused. It  goes  through  a  bio  reactor;  basically, it  cleans up  all  the  toxins back  to good water.  It basically utilized bacteria feed up ammonia nitrate and all that, and basically you clean it up biologically with good bacteria to eat all the bad things,” Mr. Srifuengfung said.