Pilkington
United Kingdom Limited has contributed glazing and technical expertise to
academics at the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) at Swansea
University, to help deliver the UK’s first net energy-positive commercial
building.
The
Active Office, located on Swansea University’s new £450 million Bay Campus, is
a prototype for net energy-positive commercial spaces and aims to demonstrate
the organisation’s broader ‘buildings as power stations’ concept. Over an
annual cycle the building is designed to generate more energy than it consumes.
The
400 sq m structure features working space for 25 people beneath a curved roof
with laminated photovoltaic cells able to generate 22kW of electrical power at
peak output. A range of additional technologies enable it to generate, store
and release solar energy in a single, integrated system that can be easily and
commercially replicated.
The
Active Office, funded by Innovate UK, builds upon the principles developed with
the Active Classroom, a learning and education demonstrator, designed by
SPECIFIC, located at the same site. These two buildings can share information
and energy providing a small ecosystem for further demonstration of Active
Technologies.
The
classroom project, which uses a range of innovative renewable energy and
efficiency-enhancing technologies, contains a laboratory and classroom used for
teaching students. For that project, Pilkington also supplied its Pilkington
Sunplus BIPV glass, which features photovoltaic power-generation technology,
turning the windows into an energy source for the building.
Achieving
a net energy generation performance involves a combination of reduced energy
demand and renewable energy supply. As well as exporting electricity to the
grid when possible, the development also uses electrical and thermal storage to
allow generated energy to be used directly by occupants and is also capable of
timeshifting energy usage to periods of lower demand, reducing stress on the
local infrastructure.
The
innovative, energy-efficient design also features low-emissivity, double-glazed
aluminium-clad timber frame windows and doors, incorporating Pilkington
energiKare Advantage glass, which help to reduce its energy use.
Pilkington
energiKare Advantage is twice as energy-efficient as standard double glazing as
it uses advanced dual coatings to reduce heat loss through windows and allows
more heat from the sun to enter the building – this effect is known as solar
gain. This improves the energy efficiency of the windows and subsequently helps
to reduce the cost of heating bills.
Pilkington
is the strategic glass partner to SPECIFIC – which is funded by the Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council, Innovate UK and the European Regional
Development Fund through the Welsh Government – and has worked closely with
academics and other industry partners – such as Tata Steel UK and Akzo Nobel –
to address the challenge of delivering low-carbon electricity and heat in UK
buildings effectively and efficiently. The Active Classroom scooped the Royal
Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Design Through Innovation award, in
addition to the 2018 RICS Project of the Year, Wales award. Judges commented
that the project “offers a clear path to the future of construction and power
generation in the same package”.
Tony Smith, Business Development & Value Added Products
Manager for Pilkington UK and Ireland, said: “Thinking about how energy is
used, generated and stored in the built environment in future is one of the
biggest challenges the UK construction industry faces. We’re committed to
-contributing to the effort by developing and delivering new advances in
energy-efficient glazing technology.
“Forging strong links with academia so that there is a robust
route for cutting-edge technology to feed into products available commercially
is a key part of our ethos as a business, and projects like the Active Office
and Active Classroom each play an important part in this process, demonstrating
what can be achieved when the right combination of technologies, expertise and
working partnerships is in place.”
Justin Searle, Industrial Technology Director at SPECIFIC,
said: “When it comes to improving the overall efficiency of buildings, it is
not the performance of any individual product that matters most, but how all of
the elements work together to generate, store and release energy.
“This project is not just about showing what can be achieved
by the right combination of products, but also getting construction industry
partners working closely together to develop the skills and ways of working
that will deliver better performing buildings in the future.”
