General information Location: Energypark West, Satheins, Austria Type of project: Commercial - Production hall and office building Type of application: BIPV, designed and planned as a part of the building envelope Time for design process: 6 months Time for construction: 1 week Realization: 1999 [ Top ] Description DOMA Solartechnik is one of the leading producers of thermal collectors. In 1999 they decided to have a new production and office building built that should perfectly fit the requirements they had. Furthermore the building should be big enough to offer room to other firms concerned with renewables - a new center for renewables will be developed, called “Energy Center West”. Thinking ecologically the owner and builder knew quite well, that as much energy (energy demand for heating and electricity) as possible should come from renewable sources. Therefore the heating demand should be covered by the thermal solar facade and by two BHKW working with biodiesel. Electricity should be produced by the PV-facade and more PV-moduls on the roof, connected with the grid. The general aims of the project are: to show technics for renewables, well integrated into the building design, using standard modules, good combination of PV and thermal collectors in the facade. Critically revised "Energypark West" can be defined as an exemplary and demonstrative project under many aspects. So far no improvements can be proposed as the design and the construction process or the team organization worked very well. It was the aim of all actors to prove that their way of involving specialists in the project at a very early stage and cooperating intensely throughout the design and construction process was an effective and successful one. The most innovative aspect can be found in the overall design of the project: different strategies of ecological building were carefully harmonized in order to guarantee the least impact on environment that could be achieved. Due to the high level of the quality of the building envelope the heating demand is so low (minimisation of heat losses) that active and passive solar energy gains can cover it most of the time (maximisation of gains). Also the backup system works with biodiesel thus covering the remaining energy demand. [ Top ] System characteristics PV system power: South facade:17,16 kWp West facade: 4,14 kWp Roof: 45,5 kWp Type of building integration: Facade-integrated modules Type of cell technology: 120 watts multi-crystalline (143 module), make: Kyocera (South facade), Solarfabrik (West facade, roof) Modular dimensions: 142,5 cm x 65 cm Array dimensions: 133 m2, 143 modules on the South facade, 450 m2 on the roof (SAG Solarstrom AG) Inverters: 8 string inverters of 1,5 kW each, make Fronius Monitoring Equipment: Thermal and electric monitoring: voltage, wind, energy production, air temperature, radiation at the south and west facades and horizontally are monitored; costs of monitoring system: € 14 500,00 [ Top ] Project cost breakdown Total 1,5 million ATS (€ 109.000,00). Construction of combined PV modules and glass approximately 300.000 ATS (€ 39 000,00) (€ 1 = 13,76 ATS) [ Top ] Performance characteristics Electricity generated: 9 985 kWh from 1.10.1999 to 25.8.2000 System availability: 100 % (excluding one week during start-up) Incidents or Outages: 1 Component: Inverter Cause: Component failure Repair: By manufacturer (one week) Design Recommendation: The inverters should be easier to connect e.g. plug and play [ Top ] Project team Client: DOMA-Solartechnik, producer of warm water collectors Project architects: Gruppo sportivo (Bludenz) and MHM (Dornbirn) Engineers PV-facade: Stromaufwärts, Photovoltaik GmbH (Rankweil) Engineers thermal facade: DOMA Solartechnik (Gebhard Bertsch) PV manufacture: Kyocera (South facade), Solarfabrik (West facade, roof) [ Top ]