Solar Cells Info

UK’s CIS Solar Tower garners 390-kilowatts from the sun

Apr 21st 2007, by Darren Murph
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/21/

We’re not entirely sure if Manchester’s CIS Solar Tower will be the world’s grandest solar tower, but in terms of buildings have moved beyond the drawing board, it definitely packs a punch. Reportedly, the flaky construction led to dilapidating walls, which were then replaced by a much greener solution — 7,244 Sharp 80W photovoltaic panels, to be precise. Curiously, only 4,898 of the modules are actually functional, but they still soak up enough sunlight to generate 390-kilowatts of energy, or in layman’s terms, enough juice to “power 1,000 PCs for a year.” Additionally, the roof is home to two dozen wind turbines that generate 10-percent of the total power used in the building. Of course, such an endeavor did ring up at a steep £5.675 million ($11.4 million), but we’re pretty certain this solar panel makeover was concerned with matters other than dollars and cents.

EARLIER REPORTS

Manchester gets largest solar tower in Europe

May 18, 2005
Source: Gaeia.co.uk
http://www.gaeia.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=45

A new approach to urban regeneration is happening right in the centre of Manchester: One of its landmark buildings is being re-clad in solar panels. Manchester’s CIS tower is being clad in solar panels. When complete it will be the tallest solar structure in Europe. The Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) tower, a Grade II listed building, already dominates the city skyline and is the tallest office building in the UK outside London. The new cladding will now make it the largest vertical solar cladding project in Europe and something of a tourist attraction.

Gary Thomas, Head of Property and Facilities at CIS said: “The Grade II listed building is already a landmark, but it is now more than 40years old and the small mosaic tiles that clad the service tower need replacing. These solar panels are the ideal solution. They will protect the tower from the elements, enhance its appearance and generate significant amounts of renewable energy.”

Three sides of the tower will be clad in the dark-blue panels creating 180,000 units of renewable electricity each year. Although this won’t be enough to run the entire building it will significantly reduce the amount of power it needs to pull from the national grid.Work on the tower is due to be finished by December 2005 and is being managed by ISG Interior-Exterior. Philip Chadwick of ISG said the project brought some particular challenges: “As with any tall building, there are additional health and safety considerations that need to be strictly adhered to and we have the advantage of bringing best practice processes onsite from our experience of working on the BT Tower and similar projects.”

The total contract is worth over £5.5 million and is being supported by a grant of £885,000 from the Northwest Regional Development Agency and £175,000 from the DTI.

Bryan Gray, Chair of the NWDA said he was delighted to be supporting the project: “Forty per cent of Europe’s energy use is associated with buildings, but old building stock is renewed at only two per cent per annum. Therefore, renewable energy and energy efficient solutions for existing buildings will be key to delivering national and regional targets in this area. As climate change moves up the political agenda, the North West is yet again shining a beacon and leading the way for the rest of the UK.”

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CIS ‘Solar Tower’ Manchester, UK

Source:Solar century
http://www.solarcentury.com/projects/commercial/cis_solar_tower

Background
In June 2005, CIS became the world’s first insurance company to launch a customer-led ethical policy to guide the ethical performance of its investments. In line with their aim to reconstitute the relationship between its business activities and nature, CIS asked solarcentury to ‘develop a solution’ for ventilated PV rain cladding for their HQ in Manchester. Arup then employed solarcentury to act as PV consultants, providing specialised PV knowledge and design. The project creates the largest commercial solar facade in Europe, and will also be one of the largest solar power systems in the UK. The service core was traditionally covered in no less than 14 million one centimetre square, grey tesserae. The mosaic began to fail a mere six months after the building was completed. It has become a significant health and safety issue, and hence the need for it to be addressed. This project demonstrates how solar power can be easily incorporated into any building refurbishment to provide an extremely cost effective alternative to conventional building materials.

Solar design
solarcentury provided specialised PV knowledge to design a weatherproof cladding solution by integrating photovoltaics (PV) around the tower’s structure, offsetting building material cost of replacing the traditional mosaic tiles. In total, 7,244 Sharp 80W modules are used to clad the entire service tower. From this total, 4,898 PV modules are live, 870 ‘full size’ dummy modules and 109 ‘medium size’ dummy modules and 1,367 edge modules were used in order to optimise the system’s electircal generation and minimise costs.

solarcentury worked with Plusswall to engineer a framing solution for solar modules and the main contractors, ISG to effectively install the solar cladding solution around the tower.

Funding
The ambitious £5.5m solar project, the largest ever in the UK, is being supported by a £885,000 grant from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and a £175,000 grant from the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI).

Each megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity generated will also be eligible for benefits under the governments Renewable Energy Obligation Certification Scheme. Under this scheme, each MWh of renewable electricity generated is eligible for a tradeable certificate. The government underwrites a minimum value for certificates of £30. Certificate values have risen steadily, and a forecast for certificate values is estimated at between £50 to £85. As such, using an assumed value of £50, the value of certificates is approximately £9,271 per year.

Summary of electricity comparisons
* Generates total electricity for 61 average three-bed houses each year
* Generates enough electricity each year to light an average three-bed house for over 305 years
* Generates enough electricity to make 6.8 million pieces of toast/9.9 million cups of tea every year

Summary of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) comparisons
* Annually saves over 100 tonnes of CO2 emissions, a major greenhouse gas, equivalent over 7 million party balloons or 63 Olympic swimming pools.
* Annual CO2 savings: account for 141 trees required to absorb CO2 over 100 years.
* To achieve the Kyoto Protocol, the UK is required to reduce CO2 emissions by 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2010. This installation offsets the contribution of 303 UK individuals to this target every year.