Low Carbon Technologies - Solar on Façades

The growing energy demands coupled with increasing environmental concerns open up new perspectives to utilize renewable and sustainable energy generation technologies. In tropical climate conditions, building façades receive a high amount of solar energy throughout the year. In order to harvest the clean energy from the sun and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in an urban environment, one increasing trend is to replace conventional building materials with building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) or building-attached photovoltaics (BAPV). Such advanced building skins are also key to achieve Super Low Energy Buildings (SLEB), Zero-Energy Buildings (ZEB) or even Positive Energy Buildings (PEB) in Singapore, as they not only enable on-site energy generation but also reduce the solar heat gain into the building (e.g. in the form of solar fenestration systems, curtain wall or shading devices with PV elements). The continuous development of the BIPV/BAPV systems in the next years certainly demands compliance with strict standards and local regulations in terms of durability, aesthetics, testing standards, performance and financial viability. Therefore, this strong projected growth can only be achieved by training a sizeable cohort of specialized experts in "BIPV/BAPV systems".