Melbourne tower to have Australia's first ‘solar skin'
Melbourne doctor Bella Freeman has teamed up with local architect Peter Kennon on a carbon-neutral, fossil fuel-free office development that will be the first in the country to harvest sunlight from its facade and convert it into electricity.
“We want this building to be a symbol of innovation and sustainability of how the built environment can be part of the climate solution,” Mr Kennon said.
Due to be completed next year, the eight-storey building at 550-558 Spencer Street in West Melbourne, is part of a wave of commercial projects that are pursuing new sustainable technologies and innovations as the real estate sector looks to play its part in Australia achieving its net zero target by 2050.
Among them, development giant Cbus Property is pursuing a similar innovation with its 49-storey tower in the Melbourne CBD to feature a facade of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels that will generate 20 per cent of the building’s base power.
Although Cbus Property’s $1 billion tower at 435 Bourke Street is substantially bigger, Dr Freeman’s West Melbourne project will likely be the first to be completed with a “solar skin” given the Cbus project is not expected to be completed until 2026.
“This will be a greener than usual building and set new standards for commercial buildings,” Dr Freeman said.
The $40 million project will replace a car wash and service station on a 1043 square metre site on the city fringe owned for a long period by the Freeman family.
A key feature will be the solar-active facade that will use a “thin-film PV module” called Skala, developed by German technology company Avancis.
With 1182 panels on the facade – 50 times bigger than a typical rooftop solar system on a house – the building will produce more energy than it uses and save an estimated 70 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.
Mr Kennon, who received the commission to design a building in 2019, noted office buildings were significant contributors to energy consumed by the built environment which uses almost half of our global energy consumption.
“At the time I had been researching glazing products in operation in Europe that “embody photovoltaic cells within a facade glass screen that didn’t look like the typical and ugly solar panels you see on rooftops”.
“In most parts of Australia, the largest consumption of energy occurs in the cooling of buildings, so we designed the facade to face a solid panel north covered in the solar panel and a clear vision glass panel south optimising the effect of the solar panel whilst minimising the heat gain through direct sunlight,” Mr Kennon said.
“This enables a maximum thermal comfort within the building using the solar to run the building with zero carbon emissions.”
Offering 5000 sq m of gross lettable area, Dr Freeman has hired Raoul Salter from Gross Waddell and James McMahon from Colliers to secure “environmentally conscious and forward-thinking businesses” as tenants.
Crema Construction will undertake the construction, which will also employing carbon trapping concrete in the building.
‘The owners’ plans are to lease it to grateful individuals and corporations who share the owners’ idea of self-sufficiency,” Mr Salter said.
