Brief
The UK’s first energy positive office building can be found at the “Active Office” of the SPECIFIC UK national Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) led by Swansea University. Since 2011, the centre researches how innovative energy technologies can reduce emissions in buildings. By deploying solar hybrid PVT collectors at their office, they produce more heat and power than is used and stand as a great example of tertiary buildings decarbonisation.
Technology
This project, which won several Building Innovation awards, features 40 of Naked Energy’s PVT collectors on the office building’s south-facing façade. The produced solar heat is kept in a 2,000m³ thermal energy storage tank and used for sanitary hot water and space heating. Electricity production is complemented by solar PV panels installed on the building’s roof.
Thanks to this solar thermal installation, a total of 1.2 tonnes of CO2 are saved every year.