Aesthetically designed solar panels like those planned for the NUS Baba House can be ideal for vertical installations on buildings as Singapore’s demand for green energy rises and rooftops run out of space, experts said.
AESTHETICS VS EFFICIENCY
A disadvantage of placing panels vertically means they get less sunlight, and industry players say advanced technology is needed before vertical fittings can be widely used.
“Considering the power generation of the vertical solar, to the conventional tilted installation, the power generation is still less,” said Mr Lim. “So we think the technology still needs to be further matured and developed before we can see widespread adoption of vertical solar.”
While designs on solar panels can improve aesthetics, efficiency will be reduced between 5 and 25 per cent, depending on design and colour, said Mr Pravettoni.
NUS Baba House’s aesthetically pleasing modules will likely see a loss of about 25 per cent on energy absorption compared with plain ones, but Mr Pravettoni said efficiency can be improved by using different material, textures, or designs.
“Colour modules – the real reason why we do that is to harmonise (with) building façade. It belongs to an idea of having modules that are trying to fulfill certain aesthetic needs. In this case, the real novelty is to have repeated patterns,” he said.
Mr Pravettoni explained that identical patterns in the Peranakan-inspired panels allow each cell to receive the same amount of sunlight, which can help to improve their efficiency and safety.
Despite the compromise on energy intake, he said aesthetics are important.
“Clearly aesthetics is important when it’s on a building because nobody wants a building to be ugly. So you want to have a building that is aesthetically appealing to the surroundings and people can look at the building and say: ‘Wow that is amazing. This is PV (photovoltaic)? That’s amazing’”, he said, referring to photovoltaic technology used in solar installations.
HUGE FUTURE POTENTIAL
While vertical installations and patterned panels are still in their early days, researchers see huge potential to integrate these solar installations on the thousands of untapped building facades in Singapore.
“Almost all over the city you have a lot of high-rise buildings and less low-rise buildings. And in high rise buildings, the vertical surface is much larger than the roof,” said Mr Pravettoni.
Apart from attaching solar panels, experts are also looking at integrating solar technology into buildings, and even along roads.
“Another approach is to (replace) a building element such as a window with a photovoltaic building element,” said Mr Pravettoni.
“There’s a lot of work still to be done but if we achieve this goal, then most of the buildings in Singapore can have photovoltaics integrated in their facades,” he said.
“Other ideas are to use (them) as noise barriers such as on the sides of a motorway or railway to act as protection for the noise and meanwhile producing electricity, and these are also installed vertically,” said Mr Pravettoni.
