Total BIPV System Capacity to Quintuple by 2017

Both the building industry, which is still plagued by low housing starts and new builds, and the global solar industry, which is facing severe reductions in financial subsidies in key markets, have been under stress in recent years. The emergent market for Building Integrated Photo Voltaics (BIPV) offers a new way to develop revenue streams for these two industries. According to a recent report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, the total capacity of BIPV systems worldwide will grow from just over 400 megawatts (MW) in 2012 to 2,250 MW in 2017, a more than five-fold increase.

“The growing availability of energy-efficient, flexible, and transparent solar materials is transforming the way that architects and building engineers view, and use, photovoltaic systems”

The annual value of the BIPV market will quadruple over the next five years, growing from $606 million in 2012 to more than $2.4 billion in 2017, the study concludes.

“The growing availability of energy-efficient, flexible, and transparent solar materials is transforming the way that architects and building engineers view, and use, photovoltaic systems,” says research director Kerry-Ann Adamson. “In the future, BIPV will no longer be confined to spandrels or overhead applications. Rather, the entire building envelope will be able to put it to use, allowing the structure to produce its own power and feed additional power into the grid system.”

Going into 2013, the BIPV market will open up more as it rebounds from the great solar depression and several long-term projects hit the market, according to the report. An increasing number of players in the supply chain are working together to provide solutions for the entire building envelope. Among the most important next steps for the industry is the development of finished solar modules made by continuous production from PV rolls. Developing the ability to print the PV coating directly on to steel roof cladding will enable the modules to be produced in large volumes, cost-effectively.

The report, “Building Integrated Photovoltaics,” examines the expanding global markets for BIPV and Building Applied Photo Voltaics (BAPV) including a comprehensive analysis of demand drivers and economics, technology issues, and key industry players. The report includes detailed profiles of 53 companies in the sector as well as a detailed review of current government policies and financial incentives. Forecasts for worldwide BIPV/BAPV capacity by world region and by technology, along with forecasts of wholesale market revenues, are provided through 2017. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Pike Research website.

About Pike Research

Pike Research, which joined Navigant’s global Energy Practice on July 1, 2012, provides in-depth analysis of global clean technology markets. The team’s research methodology combines supply-side industry analysis, end-user primary research and demand assessment, and deep examination of technology trends to provide a comprehensive view of the Smart Energy, Smart Utilities, Smart Transportation, Smart Industry, and Smart Buildings sectors. 

About Navigant

Navigant (NYSE: NCI) is a specialized, global expert services firm dedicated to assisting clients in creating and protecting value in the face of critical business risks and opportunities. Through senior level engagement with clients, Navigant professionals combine technical expertise in Disputes and Investigations, Economics, Financial Advisory and Management Consulting, with business pragmatism in the highly regulated Construction, Energy, Financial Services and Healthcare industries to support clients in addressing their most critical business needs.

Energy efficient solar home

When Neil Thompson constructed his energy-efficient home in Fishers, he knew he was making an earth-friendly decision. What he didn't know, however, was how much "green" he would add to his wallet. "I'm saving roughly $1,100 a year," said Thompson, who works in power maintenance and whose hobby is installing solar units. Thompson's residence in Forest Ridge Estates will be open for free public tours this  weekend as part of the American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Tour. 

The custom home, which was built in 1985, has a passive solar design and uses a solar photovoltaic system to provide it with electricity. Thompson will be on hand to explain how the solar PV system works and talk about the costs and incentives involved with a solar installation. Homeowners like Thompson receive  additional incentives for solar installations -- including a 30 percent federal tax credit.

"A payback on a solar home is way beyond anyone's expectations," said Thompson, who said he added solar roof panels and a two-story sun room to his home."I'm amazed about the sun's influence on the home in the middle of winter. It really brightens the house." The Thompson home is not the only metro-area stop on the National Solar Tour. From 1 to 4 p.m. today, the nature center at Cool Creek Park in Carmel will hold a program to show how solar thermal, geothermal and solar photovoltaic systems work.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Selects HP and Intel to Provide HPC Cluster

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has selected HP and Intel to provide a new energy-efficient high performance computer (HPC) system dedicated to energy systems integration, renewable energy research, and energy efficiency technologies. The new center will provide additional computing resources to support the breadth of research at NREL, leading to increased efficiency and lower costs for research into clean energy technologies including solar photovoltaics, wind energy, electric vehicles, buildings technologies, and renewable fuels.

The $10 million HPC system will reside at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), under construction on the Golden, Colorado, campus. The new system will greatly expand NREL’s modeling and simulation capabilities, including advancing materials research and developing a deeper understanding of biological and chemical processes. It will also support research into fully integrated energy systems that would otherwise be too expensive, or even impossible, to study directly. The HPC’s petascale computing capability (1 million billion calculations per second) is the world’s largest computing capability dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency research.

“This unique capability sets NREL apart in our ability to continue groundbreaking research and analysis,” NREL Director Dan Arvizu said. “In partnership with HP and Intel, NREL is acquiring one of the most energy efficient, high performance computer systems in the world for our research.”

The HPC data center at NREL is designed to be the world’s most energy efficient, with an annualized average power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.06 or better. The average data center operates with a PUE of 1.91, according to 2009 data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star Program. NREL’s data center design is compact, resulting in short runs for both electrical and plumbing components. This project features a technology, currently under development, that uses warm water in the computing rack to efficiently cool the servers.

NREL will maximize the reuse of heat generated by the HPC system. The “waste heat” from the computer system will be used as the primary heat source in the ESIF offices and lab space. Excess heat can also be exported to adjacent buildings and other areas of the NREL campus. All together, the efficiency of the data center, the energy efficiency features of the HPC system and the system’s ability to reuse heat combine to reduce overall energy use. The system is projected to deliver substantial energy savings and avoid significant costs through the efficiency improvements. The project will help the Energy Department implement President Barack Obama’s Executive Order on federal sustainability that set aggressive energy efficiency goals across the federal government.

“The industry is more and more cognizant of the amount of energy being used in our nation’s data centers,” NREL Computational Science Center Director Steve Hammond said. “NREL’s new HPC data center in the ESIF will set the standard for sustainable and energy efficient computing. The data center will have a world-leading PUE and reuse nearly all waste heat generated. Most data centers do only one or the other, not both.”

“NREL needed a system that would deliver on their commitment to energy efficiency while achieving the highest levels of performance for their researchers,” Scott Misage, director, HPC, HP, said. “HP ProLiant servers and innovative water cooled design provide the foundation needed to make this data center one of the most efficient in the world, while reaching petascale performance.”

The HPC system will be deployed in two phases that will include scalable HP ProLiant SL230s and SL250s Generation 8 (Gen8) servers based on eight-core Intel Xeon E5-2670 processors as well as the next generation of servers featuring future 22nm Ivy Bridge architecture based Intel® Xeon® processors and Intel Many Integrated Core architecture based Intel® Xeon Phi™ co-processors. The first phase of the HPC installation will begin in November 2012, reaching petascale capacity in the summer of 2013. HP and Intel were selected after a competitive, open procurement process.

“Research on renewable energy and new energy sources are the areas that are aimed to address humanity’s biggest challenges and will impact literally everyone on the globe. Our collaboration with HP and NREL is also bringing computer architecture and system cooling to accelerate innovation in more efficient use of energy critical for achieving exascale performance by end of the decade,” Stephen Wheat, general manager of High Performance Computing at Intel said. “We are proud to have Intel’s most powerful and energy efficient products as the combination of Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon Phi co-processors to help NREL in their efforts.”