Be-Smart
Innovative building envelope for sustainable, modular, aesthetic, reliable and efficient construction. Some solar power systems can now be seamlessly integrated into the building envelope and be part of a building’s façade, roof, or windows. Such building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) can contribute to achieving net-zero energy buildings and provide low electricity costs while maintaining high-quality architectural design.
Project Period
The project involved the development of new materials and processes for the manufacture of multifunctional BIPV elements and to evaluate them on full scale demonstrator buildings in Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden. White Arkitekter’s project Magasin X for Vasakronan in Uppsala was one of the three demo buildings where over 500m² of BIPV have been seamlessly integrated into the façade.
As well as developing BIPV solutions, with a new range of colours and textures that are more attractive, the project funding provided an opportunity for White to expand industry knowledge about the potential of BIPV through a webinar that was promoted to staff, clients, and collaborators.
Tool Development for an Improved Design Process
The project enabled us to test and further develop an internal tool for photovoltaic feasibility studies, with a wide range of case studies, and to develop a digital design process combined with the online system PVGIS (a tool to easily calculate solar electricity production). This new methodology makes simulations of solar potential in early design stages much more time and cost efficient and increases the likelihood of BIPV solutions being introduced more frequently in building projects, which was one of the overriding aims of the BeSmart project (www.besmartproject.eu).
Check out our BIPV webinar here:
Team: Rickard Nygren, Keith Boxer, Anders Tväråna, Alan Andrews, Julia Sandgen and Young Ill Kim
Funding: European Commission, Horizon 2020; White
Project budget: 100 MSEK
Partners: CSEM, EPFL, Compaz, (Switzerland), Saint-Gobain (France), Omsorgsbygg (Norway), with Vasakronan (Sweden) and European partners representing the whole BIPV value chain.
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