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Active Building demonstrators for a low-carbon future | Nature Energy
Decarbonizing the built environment sector is key to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, yet there are major barriers to the adoption of emerging energy technologies in buildings. Building demonstrators could help overcome such barriers by trialling technologies and engaging experts across research, construction and policy. You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF Download PDF This November, the United Kingdom hosted the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), where world leaders discussed the actions needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement 1 . Globally, buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 28% of carbon emissions 2 and hence are large contributors to global warming. To meet climate change mitigation goals, viable solutions to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the built environment sector are desperately needed. Although many low-carbon technologies are under development, evaluating them separately does not enable their integration with the building fabric or with building energy systems to be tested. This can only be achieved by integrating them into a building and assessing their performance using appropriate control methods as part of the entire building operation system. To accelerate the deployment of emerging technologies that could decarbonize the built environment, 10 years ago the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre at Swansea University 3 developed an Active Building concept. Since then, we have constructed several demonstrators that enable our researchers and partner organizations to trial novel technologies on buildings and collect real-world performance data. The demonstrators are also instrumental in engaging our researchers and partner organizations with the construction industry, building developers, building users and policymakers. Here, we offer some reflections on the benefits of building demonstrators in advancing technology deployment and the lessons learned over these 10 years. The Active Buildings concept . We define Active Buildings as buildings that integrate renewable energy technologies for heat, power and transport, supporting the wider grid network by combining energy generation with energy storage and smart controls 3 . The aim of Active Buildings is to reduce operational energy consumption and associated carbon emissions, maximize the use of locally generated renewable energy and control the import and export of energy to or from national energy grids. This allows an overall balance of energy supply and demand, thereby reducing the stress on grid infrastructure. In response to targets to decarbonize both heating and transport set by many countries including the United Kingdom 4 , 5 to align with the global transformation of energy systems 6 , this flexibility between buildings and energy networks is critical 7 . Active Buildings use six core elements: passive design principles and high-performance building fabric; energy-efficient systems and performance monitoring; on-site renewable energy generation; inclusion of energy storage; integration of electric vehicle charging; and intelligent management of their interaction with the grid. Data monitoring enables fast fault detection and remediation, as well as performance optimization and the development of control strategies. This is key to our aims to reduce the energy consumption of buildings and the associated carbon emissions. Data from our Active Building demonstrators have highlighted the importance of robust specification, installation and commissioning of building energy systems to ensure that energy targets are achieved. Incorrect specifications, wrongly installed equipment and poorly commissioned systems can lead to higher energy consumption than anticipated, and consequently higher energy bills and greater carbon emissions. For example, we reduced our energy consumption by 1 MWh from the first year of operation of our Active Office to the next, simply by using the data to identify improvements to the heating system. Once identified, we were able to implement these improvements and verify the anticipated energy savings. Our Active Building demonstrators provide a platform for trialling technologies and evaluating how they perform when integrated into a building’s fabric and how they interact with other building services, thus helping to accelerate technology scale-up. These buildings also enable companies to showcase their new technologies to the construction industry and general public in a real-world environment. Without evidence that technologies have been tested and evaluated on a building, it is unlikely that building designers and developers will risk using them on building projects — this is a considerable barrier to the adoption of new products by the construction industry. As well as providing feedback on the aesthetics of technologies and their installation and connectivity with other building services, our demonstrators enable anticipated payback periods to be calculated. The calculation is based on the initial cost of the technologies, their actual performance and the ability to optimize them to improve efficiency. These data and knowledge can assist in product development and refinement, and help secure funding and commissions for companies. Our collaborative approach to sharing detailed performance data with technology developers and their supply-chain partners substantially de-risks early-stage technology development and implementation. Finally, our demonstrators have enabled us to trial different control strategies that affect the ‘operational carbon’ of technologies (the amount of carbon emitted during operation) and consequently their whole-life carbon (the combined operational and embodied carbon for the technology’s lifetime). For example, for battery storage, which has high embodied carbon, the way the battery system is operated will affect its carbon payback. Examples of trialled technologies . At SPECIFIC, we have designed and realized several Active Buildings to test different needs and use cases. These include an off-grid garden building, a classroom and an office building. Here, we discuss a few technologies trialled on the Active Classroom and Active Office (Fig. 1a ) to highlight the benefits of these demonstrators. Fig. 1: Active Building demonstrators and the energy technologies trialled. a , The Active Classroom (right) and Active Office (left) viewed from the southwest. b , BIPV panels installed on the roof of the Active Office. c , The PVT system mounted on the south elevation of the Active Office fa?ade. d , The energy dashboard displayed in the foyer of the Active Office, showing visitors the building’s energy generation and consumption. Photographs in a – c taken by the authors. Full size image One of these technologies is a new-to-market building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) solution. The device consists of thin-film copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) cells bonded onto pre-coated steel panels (Fig. 1b ). The installation enabled us to showcase the product for the manufacturers and highlight its benefits while gaining feedback on its performance, all of which cannot be readily inferred from the product specifications. For example, the BIPV modules are barely visible, which is desirable to building owners seeking a robust, vandal-proof system, but also to architects favouring a clean aesthetic and planning officers considering visual impact on the surrounding environment. For buildability, the roof covering and BIPV are installed as one element. This means that the 97 modules on the curved Active Office roof were installed in just two days, saving both time and cost. The roof requires no maintenance and there are no additional support structures needed for the BIPV panels, which are beneficial considerations from a building owner’s perspective. In terms of performance, although reported efficiencies for CIGS cells are lower than traditional silicon, in practice we observed that their performance is similar to silicon. This is due to the ability to cover a greater surface area (as no walkways are needed) and the fact that CIGS cells perform better in low-light conditions and are not so dependent on the angle of solar incidence. Our data show that the system on the roof of the Active Office, which generates a maximum peak power of 22 kWp, is capable of generating 18 MWh of low-carbon electricity over a year in Swansea, UK 8 . On the Active Office, we also trialled a combined solar thermal and photovoltaic (PVT) system consisting of 40 tubes mounted on the south elevation (Fig. 1c ). This installation exemplifies the need for an intersectoral approach to the deployment of emerging technologies in real-world settings and the crucial role of building demonstrators. While building developers are not likely to adopt such an approach because of the associated risks, demonstrators offer a platform for such two-way communication between the technology developers and the building developers to take place. For instance, as the PVT system was such a new technology, we worked closely with the manufacturers on the design of the individual tubes. In particular, we needed to maximize energy generation on a vertical fa?ade, which led the manufacturers to optimize the angle of the photovoltaic plates. The fa?ade mounting and the round form factor meant that the panels could be angled for autumn and spring generation, so they can have the most impact on reducing the need for other sources of heat production across the whole year. On a sunny day in February, temperatures of 60 °C were achieved in the solar heating circuit when the ambient air temperature was only 12 °C. By leveraging our knowledge of the building features, we could also provide the manufacturers with information on how to design the system to reduce the effect of partial shading on the whole array. The array generates approximately 3 MWh of thermal energy per year and almost 2 MWh of electricity, supplementing space heating and hot water within the building. Furthermore, the PVT installation demonstrated the technology’s effectiveness in using a building fa?ade for energy generation while offering an architecturally striking alternative to cladding. It provided the company’s first quantifiable demonstration, which resulted in them securing further investment for scaling the manufacturing of their PVT products for the construction industry. Our demonstrators act as a platform to assess control and operational methodologies and to investigate ways to optimize performance in terms of cost or carbon emission reductions. The combination of technologies and control flexibility can be exploited in a number of experiments. For instance, we could explore demand-side response, where smart energy management strategies are used to manage energy consumption, or smart building sensor integration and control schemes, where sensors are used to control energy consumption on the basis of building occupancy. The demonstrators have enabled us to engage with partner organizations to test prototypes of such measuring equipment for adoption by the wider industry in the future. In Active Buildings, all of the major loads in the building such as space heating, hot water and vehicle charging can be time-deferred. Energy storage provides a buffer between a building and the grid, such that large energy loads are not taken from the grid at times when it is already constrained. At the same time, energy generation can be maximized by storing it until it is needed by either the building or the grid. This allows buildings to act as virtual power plants, where decentralized energy-generating technologies on buildings are aggregated to mimic a centralized power plant. We can, for instance, present a flat demand profile to the grid by using the batteries to prevent uncontrolled export in summer or uncontrolled import in winter; or use inputs such as price or carbon intensity to determine when to charge or discharge the batteries or defer loads. Our demonstrators provide excellent opportunities to assess the benefits and implications of the virtual power plant approach. The precise control of energy loads enables assessment of the impact of a building on the local infrastructure and the optimization of the operation of individual buildings. Finally, Active Buildings can also have a role in improving general awareness of energy generation and consumption. For instance, we mounted an energy dashboard in the foyer of the Active Office (Fig. 1d ) that presents data on the building’s performance to building users and visitors. The dashboard shows live data on the building systems, clearly illustrating the energy sources, consumption and interaction with the wider grid. Ongoing developments . Using knowledge and learnings from the building demonstrators, we have developed an Active Building Toolkit to aid the design of further Active Buildings 9 and support the adoption of the Active Building concept in all building projects. Through the toolkit, we provide support to organizations developing their own Active Buildings by recommending appropriate design considerations to help them achieve their building performance targets. Our building demonstrators have provided invaluable tools to advance research from laboratories to buildings, enabled many academic–industrial collaborations and generated a lot of data, knowledge and learnings. Some major challenges still remain in rolling out the Active Building concept into the construction industry. It is immensely difficult to introduce new concepts to the construction industry as making decisions in the absence of evidence on the effectiveness of a new concept or technology involves high risks. To help accelerate the adoption of the Active Building concept, the Active Building Centre ( https://www.activebuildingcentre.com ) was established in 2018 and tasked with enabling the development of many Active Buildings as part of the UK Government’s Transforming Construction Challenge 10 . Measures to aid adoption include the development of new business models, the development of standards and certification schemes, and the establishment of training courses for designers and installers. Data collated from our demonstrators, and incorporated in our toolkit, will be used to inform the progression of these enabling measures. We are continuing our building demonstration work overseas, progressing designs for two Active Building demonstrators for rural villages in India as part of collaborative research project SUNRISE ( http://www.sunrisenetwork.org ). The key role of projects such as our Active Building programme is to demonstrate new technologies, manage risk during development cycles and provide constructive feedback on operation and integration. Without building demonstration opportunities it is difficult for new technologies or products to access commercial construction projects with the high financial and reputational risk that they entail. The challenge to decarbonize energy is time critical and rapid iteration of potential solutions through building demonstrations will help to develop the variety of options and knowledge needed to meet the carbon commitments of nations globally. References . 1. The Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2020); https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement 2. Annual Report 2020 14–15 (World GBC, 2020); https://go.nature.com/3pYVqpf 3. What are Active Buildings? (SPECIFIC, 2021); https://www.specific.eu.com/what-are-active-buildings/ 4. UK Sets Ambitious New Climate Target Ahead of UN Summit (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, 2020); https://go.nature.com/3CSAFzv 5. The Road to Zero (Office for Low Emission Vehicles & Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, 2018); https://go.nature.com/3q4U2BP 6. Fostering Effective Energy Transition: 2021 Edition (World Economic Forum, 2021); https://go.nature.com/2ZMEZS8 7. Transitioning to a Net Zero Energy System: Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan 2021 4 (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, 2021); https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transitioning-to-a-net-zero-energy-system-smart-systems-and-flexibility-plan-2021 8. Clarke, J. The Active Office Case Study (SPECIFIC, 2020); https://go.nature.com/3GGT2JV 9. Clarke, J. Active Building Toolkit (SPECIFIC, 2020); https://www.specific.eu.com/what-are-active-buildings/#toolkit 10. The Grand Challenge Missions (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, 2018); https://go.nature.com/3CDUgmT Download references Acknowledgements . This work was made possible by the support given to the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant number EP/N020863/1); Innovate UK (grant number 920036) and by the European Regional Development Fund (grant number c80892) through the Welsh Government. The Active Office was funded by Innovate UK, with sponsorship from Tata Steel and Cisco. Author information . Affiliations . Swansea University, Swansea, UK Joanna Clarke?&?Justin Searle Authors Joanna Clarke View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed ? Google Scholar Justin Searle View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed ? Google Scholar Corresponding author . Correspondence to Joanna Clarke . Ethics declarations . Competing interests . The authors declare no competing interests. Rights and permissions . Reprints and Permissions About this article . Cite this article . Clarke, J., Searle, J. Active Building demonstrators for a low-carbon future. Nat Energy (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00943-1 Download citation Published : 30 November 2021 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00943-1 Share this article . Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Copy to clipboard Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative .
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