It’s 2017 and the building industry, the world over is committed now more than ever to showing off its capability for innovative and aesthetically pleasing sustainable building design. With the cost of electricity skyrocketing and the overuse of fossil fuels impacting our carbon footprint, our sustainable building consultants know that when it comes to renewable energy solutions for Australian commercial buildings and solar wins hands down.
Solar Photovoltaics are a truly elegant means of producing electricity on site, directly from the sun, without concern for energy supply or environmental harm. With total energy consumption in Australian commercial buildings expected to continue to rise, it’s Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) systems that offer the most promising and beneficial renewable energy technology for sustainable commercial structures.
As a renewable energy source, Solar BIPV may be utilised as a stand-alone system or via an embedded network, which is an electrical system that supplies an entire building, rather than occupants having individual supply contracts. The key benefit of an embedded network is lower prices through aggregated buying power and simpler allocation of shared charges. This way, sustainably generated solar power can be fed into an embedded network and sold to tenants or residents, offering greater financial saving.
Aesthetically, Solar BIPV systems are a far cry from those retrofitted, bulky rectangular structures we see fitted onto homes. Building-integrated Photovoltaics are dual-purpose, solar power generation modules, designed to replace almost all external building materials with sleek and modern styling. Photovoltaic building products can be seamlessly integrated into the walls of the building itself, or sometimes more effectively, in a multi-purpose ‘skin’ or curtain that surrounds the ‘core’ building inside of it.
These solid-state, Photovoltaic devices such as awnings, windows (PV Glazing) and skylights simply make electricity out of sunlight, silently with no maintenance, no pollution, and no depletion of materials.BIPV enabling technologies include crystalline silicon; thin film; organic solar cells, which can be processed from solution and offer the potential for inexpensive, large-scale production; and dye-sensitized solar cells, which are made of low-cost materials that do not require elaborate or high energy consuming manufacturing equipment. In essence, these types of advanced solar technology are aimed at greatly reducing the embodied energy of a structure whilst increasing the financial savings of a building over its lifetime.
With a whole new vernacular of solar electric architecture emerging, the time to go solar is now. As green building architects ourselves, we are excited for the future of solar in sustainable commercial construction, as we watch buildings, one by one to turn into mini, clean energy power plants, simply by harnessing the sun.
