Since our jump into the façade market, we’ve encountered multiple technology-combinations on façades, which make a lot of sense and left us scratching our heads, thinking, why hasn’t this been done before? The answer turns out to be deceptively simple: PV hasn’t really been a building element until now. Seeing other companies use our products for smarter solutions, we have also investigated whether we can make our production process smarter to accommodate these many applications.

Smart façades – a sunny future

Studio Solarix

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Studio Solarix

Lighting and data communication

Solarix Helmond was launched in December and marked the first combination of colored PV, LED lighting and data communication on the façade. Studio Solarix, the brains behind this façade, designed Solarix Helmond to communicate with its surroundings, visualize incoming data, and to generate sustainable energy without sacrificing aesthetics. The façade was fitted with multiple features to accomplish this.

Sorba Projects manufactured the Alpolic backing, a folded aluminum/composite element that gives the façade its robustness and mechanical fixing to the rear construction. The folded element was designed together with Studio Solarix to hold the PV modules and hide LED lighting and cabling, whilst also remaining modular in its implementation. With a hook-type fixing, the

elements can be easily detached for possible maintenance yet virtually impossible to be blown off during a storm.

Kameleon Solar manufactured the PV modules in color using our ColorBlast™ technique. With ceramic printing and scanning equipment we are able to match and re-create colors desired by architects and designers. Studio Solarix had designed 9 types of modules for the façade, three sizes each to be made in three colors. The sizes made the internal design of the modules challenging, as an uneven amount of strings were used, and the junction box needed to be placed centrally.

Kuijpers Installatie used their preferred brand of inverters to connect the PV. The largest challenge they faced during this project was the cabling of the LED lighting, which came to nearly 5km, which needed to

be hidden behind the façade elements in cable ducts. The LED was installed so that programs could be run (semi-) automatically.

The lights were programmed to music for the opening, sometimes acting like the keys on a piano, sometimes mimicking volumes or soundwaves. Later, the façade can be used to communicate the amount of energy generated, or as a barometer, to alert the locals when rain is on the way.

Insulation and power generation

We are currently in the design-phase for a project in Drammen, Norway of about 500m2 to be delivered this summer. Here, the goal is to renovate the 1960s Ticon Bygget building in order to become energy neutral. ChromoGenics, leading manufacturer of smart glass, involved us in the project to combine their electrochromic glass, ConverLight® Dynamic, and

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quadruple insulation glass with colored PV. The PV modules, this time in 9 different sizes, are combined with electrochromic glass and quadruple glass for a multifunctional façade. Quadruple glazing reduces the use of conventional heating, electrochromic glass reduces the use of cooling and need for shading, whilst the PV adds an energy-generating function. The façade alone will produce an energy reduction by an estimated 80%.

Whereas Solarix Helmond embodies a project looking to the future of urbanization, the goal of this project is to maintain the aesthetic qualities of the 1960s whilst attaining an energy neutral status, if not a positive energy yield. The color of the PV

modules was chosen to match the existing façade material, even though the existing material will be replaced entirely.

The primary energy reduction in this project is found in proper insulation. The PV panels, electrochromic and quadruple glass are fitted into prefab elements, where the PV panels are backed with insulation material. There are no weak spots where insulation is concerned, and this combination underlines the benefit of customizing the PV panel.

The methodology of prefabricated, customized elements including insulation, shading and PV components also saves time on the construction site. There is no need for the elements to be installed separately. This

project marks the first combination of ChromoGenics ConverLight® smart glass and ColorBlast.

Balustrades

Office buildings and shopping centers have relatively flat façades where shading is rarely an issue, but balconies pose an obstacle when it comes to apartment buildings. Most flats allow for as much window space per resident as possible and often the only available façade space ends up shaded under a balcony or is limited to the few public spaces such as entrances and elevators. To make the most of this space, we have introduced a new concept for the balustrade.

Together with balustrade manufacturer FEK Metaal, we have launched SNNY®, a colored PV solution for galleries and balconies. SNNY® embodies all of the customization elements of our colored modules and combines this with proven balustrade design.

The modules are slightly angled within the construction, for a better power performance and ducts have been included in the cement flooring to hide junction boxes and cables. Balconies and galleries become power generating elements that maintain their original safety functions and aesthetic options.

Architects do not lose any of their design options with this solution; the PV colors can be made-to-match and the railings can be powder-coated, leaving plenty of scope to play with combinations. Fittings can have the same look and feel using passive elements, allowing for staircases and smaller sections to adhere to the larger design.

Re-inventing solar?

For both Solarix Helmond and our upcoming façade in Norway, our products have been used in ways we didn’t anticipate when developing ColorBlast™. When solar panels become a building product instead of an add-on to a building, suddenly it’s possible to use other technologies to make smart combinations.

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The mass-produced ‘traditional’ PV module has found its market and met its goals, the only significant developments yet to come are in the efficiency of current and/or future cell material. Even then, it still begs the question whether solar parks are really the future of sustainable energy and how much longer residents will actually want to put such appliances on their rooftops. These products are also in no way suited for other applications, at least not ideally.

Laws push for greener buildings, yet high-rises simply don’t have the roof space to generate sufficient energy for their volume of use. Are we going to demand that architects use a single-sized, single-colored, flat product to overcome this boundary? If this was an answer it would have become a reality already. But making PV smarter, by combining it with other functionalities vital to the building industry, without sacrificing design or aesthetics, then PV becomes a building material architects can and want to work with. This doesn’t necessarily require us to re-invent the solar module, but it does require us to take another look at how we are producing them.

This year we’ve seen a surge in colored and custom BIPV requests where most projects aim to combine the functionalities of PV with another building material. We’ve had to take a hard look at our own manufacturing facility and investigate whether we are manufacturing smartly enough for these applications.

Re-inventing PV manufacturing

Kameleon Solar started manufacturing in 2015, focusing on custom glass/backsheet, dual-glass and flexible PV modules. In the meantime, we’ve produced a whole range of different kinds of products. From ovals, to

triangles, to sunflower-shaped modules. We’ve produced bi-facial modules for floating applications, flexible modules for inland ships, even colored PV for a truck that measures sewer water. Having experienced this wide variety of applications, it has brought us to the conclusion that there is no ideal PV panel, no ideal material, and no ideal cell type.

It’s quite funny to see monocrystalline manufacturers sneer at thin-film technology or to see thin-film manufacturers hopelessly try to explain the kWh benefit of their cell technology when, really, each cell type has its own merits. We have manufactured sizes where monocrystalline outright trumps SunPower cells for module efficiency, whereas thin-film suffers noticeably lower

losses in our ColorBlast™ technology than crystalline cells. Depending on the building, the size, the shape and the use of a PV module any one of these cell types may turn out to be best.

We already offer a high degree of customization when it comes to glass, cell layout and junction boxes, soon we will also upgrade our machine line, to be able to automatically place and interconnect at least three different cell technologies in multiple sizes. By selecting the best cell material per project, we estimate increases of module efficiencies by up to 18%.

The next step

Architects are not easy clients, for which we are grateful. We started customizing uncolored PV for architects, but they complained about the ugliness and uniformity of PV panels. They wanted color and specifically they wanted to choose their own colors and to know they would match color codes of other materials. Hence our development of ColorBlast™.

We are once again hearing criticism of PV in the sense that it is too ‘flat’ or ‘two-dimensional’. I believe the next step in customized solar, for the building industry, will be found in three-dimensional design, perhaps with 3D printing, composite molding, or another technology entirely. The benefit of a three-dimensional unit is that it is far easier to integrate other technologies, such as heating, cooling, domotic controllers or measuring equipment.

We can speculate over the future all we want but wherever this market goes, it looks to be a sunny future.

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