Solar panels to provide for BCA Academy's electricity needs
Tania Tan, Straits Times 5 Jul 08;
INSTEAD of gobbling up electricity from Singapore's power grid, one local building could soon be able to fend for itself.
Planners unveiled yesterday details of renovations to a Braddell Road research institute that would make it the country's first zero-energy building.
Officials hope to cover the government-run BCA Academy with half a football field's worth of solar panels, said Professor Lee Siew Eang, the project's head researcher.
The ultra-efficient institute, scheduled for completion next year, would also use about one-third the power of an average building and be able to survive on its own electricity.
'Hopefully, with a little help from heaven, there won't be too many rainy days, and we'll have our zero-energy building,' said Prof Lee, who works at the National University of Singapore.
The building would be at the forefront of a trend to turn buildings into batteries, thus reducing power consumption and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Officials hope the homes and offices of the future will be able to power themselves, said the president of the Institution of Engineers Singapore, Ms Lee Bee Wah.
But the difficulty is two-fold. The buildings must be energy efficient, and affordable sources of renewable energy - like solar power - must be developed, said Ms Lee, who is also an MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC.
Simply using renewable energy without improving efficiency would be futile.
'We cannot just plaster solar panels, as that will make costs skyrocket,' said Prof Lee.
Daylight, natural ventilation and visitor- tracking systems will be used to improve energy efficiency, said Prof Lee.
Green buildings are key in ensuring economic growth, environmental sustainability and a high quality of life for urban dwellers, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week.
The BCA building is not the only one heeding his call.
Under a $10 million plan by the National Environment Agency, manufacturers and contractors receive co-funding for doing an energy audit on their business.
As of last month, 107 applications to the three-year-old scheme were approved, with building projects accounting for more than 70 per cent.
If implemented, the projects could save a whopping 327,000MWh annually, or $28 million in power bills.
The Government is considering six bids for the project, tentatively scheduled for completion by next year.
Six bids logged for green building project
But contractors sound caution with requests for longer warranty period
Jamie Lee, Business Times 5 Jul 08;
SINGAPORE'S first zero energy building (ZEB) project has attracted six bids for the main tender and interviews with four 'serious' bidders will start next week, the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) said yesterday.
The tender to convert the BCA Academy into a net zero energy building has drawn bids ranging from $10.4 million to $11.8 million.
The six companies that tendered are: ACP Construction, Dokota, Logistics Construction, Lexon Furniture & Construction, Shanghai Chong Kee Furniture & Construction and Stallion Development. All six are mid-size unlisted companies. 'We have six that came in. There are four serious ones that we are going to proceed with tender interviews next week,' Ang Kian Seng, deputy director of technology and innovation development at BCA, said on the sidelines of a ZEB seminar.
Of the four short-listed firms, three are Singaporean while one is a Chinese company, he said.
BCA closed the construction tender on June 6. It has already awarded the building's solar energy tender to Singapore firm Grenzone for $1.7 million.
In a sign of caution, some suppliers and contractors for renewable energy projects are 'over-specifying' with requests for warranties as long as 20 years, said Lee Siew Eang, who heads the research centre set up by BCA and the National University of Singapore. This is double the usual warranty period for specialised building projects and could raise costs as much as 40 per cent, said Eugene Seah, executive director of Davis Langdon & Seah.
'There is a benchmark in the industry and the maximum is usually 10 years,' he said.
Companies are seeking 20-year guarantees because while solar panels tend to last for that long in temperate regions, they could be damaged faster by Singapore's tropical weather.
'When (the panels) are exposed to the afternoon sun, it can be over 50 degrees. With rain and thunderstorms, you can go down to 28 degrees, so there is expansion and contraction. That element of uncertainty is still there,' said Prof Lee.
Singapore lags regional neighbours such as Malaysia, Japan and Thailand, which are also constructing ZEBs.
The ZEB project was launched in November last year. By 2009, the BCA Academy will be fitted with solar panels to generate electricity that is transferred into a normal power grid.
The amount of energy produced will match the amount of power consumed in the building.
ZEB, which will cost about 10 per cent more than a conventional building, will become a test centre for other green building technology, such as energy- efficient lamps and fan-ventilation systems.
The target is to run the building on 70 per cent less energy than a conventional building. ZEB is expected to run on 86 kilowatts per hour (kwh) per sq metre, compared with 230 kwh per sq metre for standard buildings.
