General information Location: Petten, the Netherlands Sunshine hours (yearly average): 1 477 hours per year, 4,05 hours per day Type of project: Curved glass roof integration Type of application: BIPV Time for design process: 2 year Time for construction: 1 years Realization: Start of operation PV-system: February 2001, Building 42 – unit 2 was realized in the spring of 2002 [ Top ] Description In 1996 the Renovation project for the ‘General Laboratory of the Netherlands Energy Research Foundation ECN’, as well named building ‘31’ started with the aim of a solar and energy efficient transformation of the 1963 built laboratory. At the same time it was found, that a new building complex should be placed next to the building 31 to serve the growing demand for space of the Netherlands Energy Research Foundation. Building 42 is planned as a modular extension of the existing and solar renovated building 31. A conservatory interconnects building 31 and 42. Building 42 consists of three building blocks, which are grouped around the glazed conservatory space covering the circulation axis and will be built in three steps. Building 42.1 is finished in March 2001. Construction of unit two has started in spring 2002 and the realization of unit three is foreseen as a further extension possibility and will be built in three years. The brief for the project was to design multi-functional office and laboratory space. The design also has to be sustainable and exhibit the use of renewables. [ Top ] System characteristics PV system power: 43 kWp (unit one and two) Step 1: building 42 - Unit 1: 26,73 kWp Step 2: building 42 - Unit 2: 16,31 kWp Step 3: building 42 - Unit 3: no further PV Type of building integration: Conservatory glazing Type of cell technology: BP Solar mono crystalline LGBG-‘Laser Grooved Burried Grid’-cells, Measurements 125 x 125 mm, efficiency ca. 16,5 % Module dimensions: 575 mm x 1175 mm with 32 PV-cells per module PV-module construction: Frameless custom sized PV-glass-glass laminates made by BP-Solar: Frontside: 3 mm hardened white glass, EVA - PV-cells - EVA, Backside 4 mm glass Inverters: 24 string inverters for building 42.1: 14 x type BP-Sunny Boy 2400 and 1 x type BP-Sunny Boy 1100-E for building 42.2: 9 x BP-Sunny Boy 2400 Other elements: The conservatory PV-glass roofing has been made by Allicon with standard profiles for greenhouse glass [ Top ] Project cost breakdown PV-system curved conservatory roof for building 42 unit 1 and 2: € 384 352 for 43 kWp complete PV-system by BP Solar. Price includes: PV-engineering PV-modules inverters with modems and datalogger electric cabeling and components electric installation Price does not include: mechanical installation of PV-modules in the roof glazing profiles to hold the PV-modules [ Top ] Performance characteristics The PV-systems started operation in March 2001 (for building 42.1, so evaluated data will be available in a later stage. Monitoring will be permanently performed on the system by the ‘Solar Energy Group’ of ECN with scientific ambitions: especially for the building 31 PV-plants single cells foreseen for the production of the PV-modules have been exactly calibrated before they have been built in the modules. This allows an exact calculation of the PV-system efficiency. The Sunnyboy string inverters are equipped with modems, which permanently transfer data to a datalogger, which has been developed by SMA-Regelsysteme (producer of Sunnyboy inverters) to store the data of several string inverters. The data is transmitted over the electricity net. By ECN calibrated solar cells and temperature sensors are included in nine of the PV-modules, to allow to evaluate scientifically exact performance efficiency of the PV-system with the measured data. [ Top ] Project team Client: Netherlands Energy Research Foundation (ECN) Westerduinweg 3, Petten, The Netherlands Tel.: +31-224-564949 Fax: +31-224-564480 E-mail: info@ecn.nl Internet: www.ecn.nl Architect: BEAR Architecten BV Gravin Beatrixstraat 34 NL-2805 PJ Gouda, Netherlands Tel.: +31-182-529899 E-mail: office@bear.nl Engineers: Van Heugten Nijmegen Contractor: VBK Hoorn PV Manufacturer: BP Solar [ Top ]