White Gum Valley (WGV) is a 2.2ha residential infill development being delivered by the Western Australian (WA) State Government Developer, LandCorp. Consisting of five multi-residential/group housing sites and 23 single residential sites, WGV will eventually accommodate up to 100 dwellings and 250 people. At the end of 2018, WGV will be approximately 70% built out and occupied.
WGV incorporates a number of innovative urban design, technology and governance initiatives that are the subject of research projects being led by Curtin University and the CRC for Low Carbon Living in collaboration with government and industry partners. The development is described as a ‘Living Laboratory’ where low carbon concepts, technology and practices can be tested in a real-life setting.
Sophisticated monitoring equipment has been installed across the development to enable the collection of building scale performance data such as energy and water use. This work has been undertaken as part of CRCLCL research project RP3033 along with other projects such as the ARENA funded strata solar energy storage trial (of which the CRCLCL is a participant). Data collection, analysis and reporting is underway as part of these projects and will continue through until June 2019.
This new project will develop an open source data access platform that will enable ready access to the performance data by end-users such as industry, government agencies and other researchers as a resource. It is envisaged that this will greatly assist practitioners and policy makers who are seeking evidence to support the implementation of low carbon initiatives