SBED - Sustainable Building Envelope Demonstration - Industrial Partner / Consortium

Descriptions

Scope of the ProjectSBED aims to accelerate, through demonstration, the development of innovative energy generating building façades for low carbon design solutions, transforming the role of the building envelope from passive energy conservation to one of generation, storage, distribution and intelligent management for optimal performance.SBED will design, model, test, prototype and monitor low carbon building systems using integrated solar thermal and photovoltaic technologies in eight ‘buildings in use’, solely in the Wales Convergence areas. Building types include Residential, Commercial (offices or retail), Industrial and Institutional (schools, hospitals, care homes). The institutional buildings may be publicly owned, but all other buildings must be privately owned. These innovative systems will significantly reduce the energy requirements of buildings and generate thermal energy and electricity. The focus on retrofit and refurbishment recognises the critical need to tackle the existing building stock as well as future new build programmes. SBED will closely monitor the construction, implementation and performance of the demonstration systems, disseminating best practice to the wider industry.The project will be delivered with Cardiff University, through its Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI) and Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), as a single sponsor with an Industrial Delivery Partner/Consortium selected through an open EU procurement process. Cardiff University will work with the successful Industrial Delivery Partner/Consortium to install Transpired Solar Collector (TSC) and Photovoltaic (PV) cladding demonstrations onto third party, private sector, buildings in the Wales Convergence areas. The primary benefit of this project to Wales is the potential for the introduction of new or improved products and services, which can attract further investment into Wales, and also potential for export markets to be explored. Other areas of benefits delivery are in relation to job protection / creation resulting from increased sales of raw material and demand for installation and maintenance services within the Welsh construction industry (in home and export markets). The installed building systems will result in significant energy and CO2 reductions for end users.