$40 million office building with 'solar skin'

Australia's first eight-storey solar-clad office building is expected to open in mid-2023, helping to reduce CO2 by 77 tons per year.

An eight-storey building coming up on Spencer Street, West Melbourne, Australia, will become the country's first office building with a "solar skin", marking a turning point in the construction industry, Interesting Engineering today 6/6 reported. This $40 million office building will be equipped with 1,182 solar panels with the thickness of conventional facade glass.

Design of office building on Spencer Street.

When completed, the solar panel system is expected to provide enough energy to cover nearly all of the building's needs, so it doesn't cost much on electricity. It will also become a carbon neutral building in the next few years, a good example of the decarbonization prospects in the construction industry.

The building was designed by Melbourne-based architect Pete Kennon, built by Crema Constructions and is expected to open in mid-2023. The solar skin, manufactured by German company Avancis, is called the Skala system.

Skala uses thin-film PV modules placed on a grid to transmit the generated electricity to the building's main power supply. The system can generate 50 times more energy than typical solar cells installed on the roofs of homes.

Once completed, the system will provide nearly enough electricity to meet the energy needs of the entire building, while reducing CO2 by 77 tons per year. In addition, the building also added solar panels on the roof.

The building will pay off its carbon debt, Kennon said, without relying on carbon offsets or other payment methods. "It's entirely possible, even though a building that harnesses sunlight through its 'skin' sounds like something you'd dream of or see in a cartoon," Kennon said.

Australia is a leader in solar energy, but covering panels around buildings has never been used in the country. This is why the project on Spencer Street will help set a new quality standard, allowing solar skins to undergo final testing before being approved for use on other buildings.

In Europe, office buildings with solar panels are not new. For example, an office building on Miller Street in Manchester, England, also has solar cells mounted around it and has been producing electricity for many years. On the other side of the world, Taiwan's Sun Rock project plans to build a building covered with solar panels that can generate about 1 million kWh of electricity.

Meanwhile, other sustainable technologies are also helping the construction industry become "greener", for example transparent solar cells that allow electricity to be generated from windows in offices, houses, sunroofs in cars. , even smartphones.