The University of Wollongong and Blue Scope Steel have won an Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating (AIRAH) award for their Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) Thermal project.
The ARENA supported project aimed to boost the use of BIPV by developing a tool that assists in designing optimal BIPV-thermal (BIPV-T) systems for building retrofits. Partners in the project included Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany).
The team’s rooftop PV thermal system with energy storage took out the 2013 AIRAH – Denis Joseph Award for Innovative Use of Solar Energy in Heating Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC&R).
The PV thermal roofing retrofit solution developed in this project was also part of the Energy Matters sponsored Team University of Wollongong Illawarra Flame House, which won the 2013 Solar Decathlon in China.
The Illawarra Flame house features a 9.4KW solar panel system comprising two types of PV cell technology – a thin-film Copper indium gallium selenide based (CIGS) array and a polycrystalline solar panel array.
The Flame House’s air conditioning system combines a photovoltaic thermal (PVT) air system coupled with Phase Change Material (PCM) thermal storage. The PVT system removes hot air from underneath the CIGS solar panels, increasing the efficiency of the panels and provides space heating in winter and night-sky radiant cooling in summer.
“Team UOW’s Illawarra Flame is the first home in any Solar Decathlon competition to address the issue of upgrading existing building stock, an essential task for a sustainable future,” says the team’s web site. “The Illawarra Flame demonstrates how a ‘fibro’ house, a common and extremely energy-inefficient Australian icon, can be modified and retrofitted to be an ultra-sustainable home for the future.”
ARENA is the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, set up to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies and to increase the supply of renewable energy in Australia. ARENA provided $477,320 for the $1.6 million BIPV-T project.
