The great PV break-through

Ross McGuinness is Area Sales Manager for Kingspan Insulate and Generate. In this guest post, he celebrates the unprecedented take-up of solar PV, but warns it’s too early to break out the Champagne just yet…

The massive expansion of solar PV capacity in the UK has passed another milestone recently. Just a couple of weeks ago, SPV broke through the symbolic barrier of 1,000MW of installed capacity.

Sunset reflected in a solar panel, by ToGa Wanderings on Flickr

This growth has been rapid: in April 2010 there was a mere 26MW installed nationally. 23 months down the line and the industry has topped 1GW, which is a stunning result. The driver behind this seismic shift towards green, renewable energy is without a doubt the government-backed Feed-in Tariff (FiT).

This is all very positive news, and with the announcement from the Department of Energy and Climate Change some weeks ago stating their wish to have 22GW installed by 2020, you could be forgiven for thinking that everything is rosy in the SPV garden.

This announcement of several weeks ago has set out something of a roadmap for PV, but key questions need to be addressed before the industry will come out and support the new policy.

The government has destroyed any trust it may have had with the sector and it will take quite some time to repair what has become a fractious relationship. Continued court actions and appeals mean that, in the short term at least, a cloud hangs over SPV in the UK right now.

Looking at what is proposed by government, many industry insiders believe that it will be challenging to convince consumers to invest in SPV at the new rates. One of the main drivers of SPV has been the willingness of investment firms to “fund” SPV, hence the plethora of “free” installs whereby the end user got the benefit of free or discounted electricity and the funder got the Feed-in Tariff.

The new FiT rates will make it unlikely that similar funding models would be viable from an investor perspective. Funders look for an IRR of a minimum return of 7%; anything less and they simply go elsewhere for their fix. The government is on record as stating that they envisage returns of ca. 5% and will strive to ensure they do not go any higher by linking the price of PV modules to the FiT rate.

On the face of it this is a good proposal and should go some way to preventing the “Boom and Bust” that has beleaguered the industry. The mechanism has the potential to provide a sustainable and controlled future for the FiT.

In the long term, this is a positive for the industry, but short term – bearing in mind the skepticism and mistrust about the government’s attitude, and also bearing in mind the further cuts announced for July – you can understand why many are not cracking out the champagne just yet.

Solar panels in a low-tech setting: Breckenridge, Colorado

The belief is that Westminster is out of touch with where the industry is at, but most crucially and disappointingly, they fail to see where the industry can go. The Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change tweeted a couple of weeks ago that the Germans had just announced big cuts to their FiT scheme, implying that he was actually correct in pursuing the cuts here – blissfully ignoring the fact that Germany has had a Feed-in Tariff for the past decade, has a total installed capacity close on 25GW and operates on a completely different scale to the UK.

Under the new rates, the German government is proposing to pay €0.135/kWh for ground-mounted solar farms with a capacity of 10MW or less, and for rooftop installations that are 1–10MW in size. Germany is lightyears ahead of what is currently viable in this country.

There are, however, some reasons to be optimistic. The Chinese government last week directed the leading polysilicon and solar cell manufacturers to increase production, which should see prices continue to fall. That’s good news for consumers and probably bad news for non-Chinese manufacturers. China really does seem to be attempting to establish itself as the SPV equivalent of the Middle East. Continued downward pressure on price of SPV definitely looks set to continue in the short-to-medium term.

The great PV breakthrough should achieve one thing, however: SPV will at least now receive the recognition it deserves as a viable and high-quality alternative to fossil fuels. The SPV industry deserves recognition in Government energy strategy.

There is simply no reason why, if there is willingness on behalf of the powers that be, that by 2020 the UK cannot have the 22GW of solar capacity that government says it wishes to have.

Ross McGuinness, Area Sales Manager, Kingspan Insulate and Generate

Twitter: @rossmcguinness   Email: ross.mcguinness@kingspan.com

Spotlight on solar air heating

Andrew Brewster leads the Renewables Design Team for the CA Group – a specialist building envelope manufacturer and installer. In this guest post, he puts one of the lesser-known solar technologies under the spotlight:

Solar air heating is a proven technology that has been developed specifically for heating large spaces. With high-profile advocates including The Royal Mail, Marks & Spencer and Jaguar Land Rover, the technology is increasingly expected to become part of the sustainability strategy of those companies leading the charge for environmental responsibility.

Harnessing sunrays to heat large spaces

What is solar air heating?
Solar air heating works by harnessing the sun’s energy via a Transpired Solar Collector (TSC), or SolarWall®. The SolarWall® technology pre-heats fresh, outside air, which is then actively drawn into the building’s heating system, contributing considerably to a reduction in the need for fossil fuels.

The technology is 100% renewable and has the effect of dramatically reducing a building’s overall heating requirement, providing significant savings in energy consumption and carbon emissions.

SolarWall® in action
CA Group recently installed the world’s largest SolarWall® on a single building for Marks & Spencer, at the retail giant’s 80,000m² East Midlands Distribution Centre (EMDC) in Castle Donington. The 4,500m² Transpired Solar Collector is expected to reduce the building’s heating requirement by somewhere in the region of 30%, by generating more than 1,135,000kWh and saving over 256t of CO2 per annum.

The SolarWall® can be seen in action at the Jaguar Land Rover training academy in this video:

The benefits
The revolutionary solar air heating system has the lowest capital cost and the highest known efficiency of any active solar technology in the world (up to 80%), generating in excess of 500 Watts of thermal energy per square meter on a clear day [Dr. Chuck Keutcher, U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)].

It also offers the quickest return on investment, with an estimated payback period of three years on new build and eight years on retrofit applications. So as well as being an excellent option from an environmental perspective, it is also one that makes good commercial sense.

Global recognition
SolarWall® has been available for almost 30 years and is used in over 35 countries globally. A number of companies have tried to emulate the system but, due to a lack of understanding and third-party testing, they have been unable to replicate SolarWall®’s level of system performance.

In the UK, as part of its ongoing development and accreditation, the technology has received the independent endorsement of five leading authorities: Oxford Brookes University, the Welsh Assembly, Cardiff University, BSRIA and BRE.

CA Group has seen a significant uptake in the technology because of the very tangible results it delivers. As awareness of the technology’s capabilities increase, the Group anticipates that solar air heating will become part of the sustainability strategy of more and more companies looking for cost-effective ways of making the biggest impact on their CO2 emissions.

CA Group’s interactive Renewables Guide offers further information on solar air heating and other renewable options geared towards the generation of power and heat for commercial, industrial and distribution centres.

• Find out more by downloading a copy of the CA Group’s Renewables Guide.
• Find, select and compare solar energy products on ESI.info.

Solar power and feed-in tariffs

A sunny day after the endless wet of August got me thinking about solar power.

Solar Energy System - Jeremy Levine Design on Flickr

In April 2010 the government introduced a feed-in tariff (FiT) to encourage low carbon electricity generation, particularly by organisations not traditionally associated with electricity generation. In effect the government was paying a generous fixed price for electricity being fed into the grid from small-scale renewables projects.

– Anaerobic digestion
– Hydro
– Micro-CHP
– Solar PV
– Wind

In February 2011 the government announced it wanted to reduce the incentives for large solar farms, although by targetting installations over 50kW in size this included larger rooftop installations on public and private buildings, as well larger field sites.

A reduction in the feed-in tariff from around 41 pence/kWh down to 19 pence/kWh (or less) for schemes completed after the 1st August 2011 has now been implemented.

The realities of living in a PassivHaus

Thermal image of a PassiveHouse (Young Germany)

Once the scaffolding is down and the blower door test has been passed, what is it actually like to live in a PassivHaus? How does it feel to occupy a house that is kept warm using only your own body heat; a house that is completely airtight and needs no conventional heating system? How does it change your behaviour, needs and habits?

PassiveHouse as a concept

The concept of the passive house (or PassivHaus for the internationalists amongst us) is becoming increasingly well known amongst British architects, contractors, developers and clients. It has moved from being yet another forward-thinking construction method that is adopted in mainland Europe but largely ignored in this country, to being championed by a number of UK built environment professionals.

Information abounds when it comes to PassivHaus certification requirements, test results, design detailing, building physics and heat capacities. The Passipedia website is a good resource in this respect. It also gives an interesting historical review of  passive houses from the past. Did you know, for example, that Fridtjof Nansen’s 1883 polar exploration ship Fram functioned like a PassivHaus? Nansen wrote:

Dezhou – a technology hub for solar energy

Following on from our earlier post on Trondheim’s strategy to create a ‘supercluster’ for maritime knowledge and research, here’s a look at Dezhou, in Shangdong Province, China, which has developed itself as a ‘world solar city’.

Dezhou is hosting the 2010 International Solar Cities congress in September. It is home to 100 solar enterprises with 586 solar product patents, and five solar scientific research programmes belonging to National Plan 863.

China Solar City

Called China Solar Valley, the Dezhou cluster covers an area of 330 hectares of research and manufacturing facilities, including the world’s largest solar water heater production plant. Around 800,000 people work in the solar panel industry.

There has also been a determined effort to ensure that solar technologies are put to spectacular use.

The Sun-Moon Mansion is a 75,000m2 solar-powered building (office space / exhibition centre / R&S centre / hotel) with over 2000 solar collectors above its roof.

The Sun-Moon Mansion

Seasonal heat storage, solar heating and cooling, and geothermal heating are used to supply hot water, cooling in summer, and heating in winter, whilst photovoltaics generate energy and provide lighting.

Energy saving glass, sun-shading panels, external wall insulation, roof gardens, rainwater collection and water treatment systems also feature.

But there’s also the more mundane, but probably more important, schemes that address the needs of the local population. As a result of the One million solar roofs project more than 80% of the urban buildings are covered by solar water heaters.

Solar bathrooms in hundred villages is another project.

ESI references:

• Solar energy

Foster’s Masdar City: putting sustainable energy to the test

OnePlanetCommunities on Flickr

Foster + Partners’ Masdar City development in Abu Dhabi is getting a lot of press and blog coverage at the moment. The project is, in the architects’ words, “a six million square metre sustainable development that uses the traditional planning principles of a walled city, together with existing technologies, to achieve a carbon-neutral, zero waste community. It will be a centre for the development of new ideas for energy production”.

Building recently published pictures of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. The nicely detailed terracotta-coloured GRC cladding of the city’s first completed building reflects aspects of traditional Islamic architecture.

Masdar’s energy will come entirely from renewable resources:

• a 40–60 megawatt solar power plant
• roof-mounted photovoltaic modules
• wind farms outside the city’s perimeter
• geothermal power
• waste-to-energy
• the world’s largest hydrogen power plant

Behind the scenes, Masdar will also host the world’s first real-time study to test the effectiveness of smart home appliances in reducing electricity consumption during peak demand periods, as detailed in Abu Dhabi’s newspaper The National.

Narrow, shaded streets (OnePlanetCommunities on Flickr)

General Electric (GE) selected Masdar City for this pilot project because its electricity will be distributed through a ‘smart grid’ that combines power transmission with the internet.

The two-year Masdar City test will use ‘demand response enabled appliances’ specifically designed for the pilot programme, and will involve some of the city’s first residents. Test results will be of great interest in the European Union, which aims for 80% of all households to be equipped with a smart electricity meter by 2020.

For an alternative view, see this debate on Treehugger on whether a development like Masdar can ever be ‘truly sustainable’.

ESI references:

• Smart home technology
• Solar energy
• Wind turbines
• Ground source heat pumps
• Water harvesting and reuse

Cleaning Europe’s waterways: the floating island of Physalia

Physalia on the Seine, Paris

Vincent Callebaut Architectures has designed Physalia, a floating structure that takes its name and shape from the Portuguese Man o’ War. It has, however, a friendlier purpose than its venomous, invertebrate namesake.

Variously described as an amphibious garden and a floating island, the structure is designed to sail down the polluted rivers of major European cities, purifying the water as it goes.

The East elevation: solar panels and vegetation

Entirely self-powered via solar panel cladding and pneumatic roof membranes, Physalia crafts are intended to help clean the Seine, Thames, Volga, Danube and Escaut using the following process:

• The vessel has an aluminum surface covering its steel structure.
• A titanium dioxide layer of anatase form reduces water pollution when reacting with ultraviolet rays.
• In addition to being a self-cleaning vessel, it can absorb and recycle through a photo-catalytic effect.
• Physalia’s double hull is criss-crossed by a hydraulic network that filters the fluvial water and purifies it biologically, thanks to its planted roof.

The deck of the vessel

Other projects have fused conceptual architecture with water purification systems: the Whitney Water Purification Facility and Park, designed by Steven Holl Architects, was chosen as one of the Top Ten Green projects for 2007 by the American Institute of Architects.

The ecofriend blog showcases another floating island used for water purification on a smaller scale: this one, in Poland, is powered by people on exercise bikes…

(Images by kind permission of Vincent Callebaut Architectures.)

ESI references

• Biological water treatment
• Solar energy

Low exergy buildings – using the right type of energy

Office building Rijkswaterstaat / Paul de Ruiter on Arch Daily

Buildings account for one third of the world’s primary energy demand. The Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community Systems (ECBCS) Programme, which is operated by the IEA (International Energy Agency), ‘carries out research and development activities toward near-zero energy and carbon emissions in the built environment.’

One part of this research – Annex 49 – is looking at developing ‘concepts for reducing the exergy demand in the built environment.’

It takes for granted the need to reduce the requirement for energy (i.e. insulation) and increase the efficiency of systems (i.e. boiler efficiency). Rather, it focuses on how the energy that is needed, for heating and cooling say, can be provided by low valued rather than high valued sources.

In this context, low valued energy is derived from the sun, heat pumps or other renewable resources, whilst high valued sources equate to fossil fuels.

For an overview that is both thorough and understandable try the guidebook on the lowex.org site.

Case studies can also serve as a useful introduction into the subject:

The office building of the Centre for Sustainable Building is a demonstration and research project for the German research programme on ‘solar optimised building’.

Rijkswaterstaat is a demonstration project for the Dutch sustainable and low-energy building programme. ‘The available natural resources of water, sun and earth are harnessed to the maximum in and around the office.’

Bregenz Art Museum in Austria is another example. Its climate control system was designed as a structural cooling / heating unit, and allows the building to do without conventional air-conditioning units under normal operating conditions.

ESI references:

• Heat pumps
• Solar energy
• Biomass boilers
• Wind turbines

King Abdullah International Gardens: a giant oasis in the desert

KAIG: set for completion in 2011 (Barton Willmore)

Barton Willmore has designed this spectacular botanical garden, set in 160 hectares of arid desert landscape in the Saudi central region, to the south west of Riyadh.
The ambitious team, led by Nick Sweet and advised by experts from the Eden Project and the Natural History Museum, sees the project as a chance “to educate, to entice, to excite and to entertain, and whilst doing so, to pass on a message about who we are, where we have come from, where we may be going, and the choices that may still be available to us.”

The Butterfly Garden (image: Barton Willmore)

KAIG will record 400 million years of botanical history by creating a paleobotanic timeline, with authentic interpretations of ecosystems that existed on this site in past epochs.

The crescent-shaped main building will enclose seven controlled environments.

Visitors – up to 45,000 per day – will be taken on a journey through landscapes from the Devonian, Carboniferous, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Cenzoic and Pilocene eras.

There will also be scientific gardens, a Water Garden and a Wadi Garden (wadi is Arabic for dry riverbed or valley).

Finally, the Garden of Choices explores the consequences of the decisions we make regarding the environment.

The Paleobotanic Building (image: Barton Willmore)

The carbon-neutral scheme will harvest stone, rainwater and solar power to sustain its development and operation.

A comprehensive seed-bank, protected from germination by the dry desert climate, will aid future research and project developments.

The project website contains a wealth of images and information: masterplan, strategic contexts, a database of botanical garden precedents, fly-by animation, perspective sketches, and extensive details of each individual garden.

Followers of the project’s blog are looking forward to keeping track of the 3-year building process via site webcams and Google Earth.

An external view (image: Barton Willmore)

ESI references:

• Water reuse and recycling
• Landscaping
• Plant sourcing
• Solar energy
• Shade canopies

Copenhagen Climate Conference

Can the COP 15 delegates reach a CO2 agreement?

On the 7th of December, heads of state, advisors, officials, campaigners and media personnel from over 200 countries are gathering in Copenhagen for ‘COP 15’ – the UN’s historic climate change conference.

The aim of the conference is to hammer out an agreement on how to reduce global CO2 emissions.

“This is the most complicated deal the world has ever tried to put together,” says Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial College and an adviser on climate change to the Foreign Office.

The ‘tck tck tck‘ website counts down the days, hours and seconds till the Copenhagen conference, providing campaign updates and climate change news from around the world.

ESI information on products that can help reduce CO2 emissions:

• Insulation
• Solar energy
• Wind turbines
• Heat pumps
• Biomass energy
• Combined heat and power