Future Cities Lab Global • Powering the City

Watch the POW-symposium recording online: http://www.youtube.com/@fclfuturecitieslaboratory7009

>>> UPCOMING EVENT: PhD Defense Justin McCarty, "Solar Energy in the City: Localised Urban Integrated Photovoltaic Deployment"; 9th Dec. 2024, 15:30 CET. Join online on Zoom: https://ethz.zoom.us/j/69948135655

Urban Building Integrated Photovoltaics

The Powering the City (POW) research module finds architectural, technical, infrastructural, and socioeconomic solutions to a large-scale urban decarbonization by increasing solar energy production on buildings.

The research includes the development of holistic, multi-scale and interdisciplinary approaches for assessing large-scale deployment of (building integrated) photovoltaic in realistic urban contexts under different climatic, socioeconomic, and architectural conditions. Zurich and Singapore are used as complementary case studies, as we interact with educators, public stakeholders and agencies to directly apply research into practice by receiving feedback and providing training on toolboxes developed. The guiding question of the FCL Global: Powering the City research module is:

“How can Photovoltaics (PV) on buildings optimally support urban energy and materials efficiency?”

The module thereby investigates the techno-economical, environmental, social, as well as architectural feasibility of a large-scale deployment of urban PV, specifically facade-integrated (BIPV) and attached (BAPV) systems. Revolving around it, there are four work packages (WP):

WP 1 – Energy & Design: Investigates topics on urban and building energy demand, renewable potentials, retrofitting pathways, next-generation decentralized and renewable energy systems, architectural design, and generative design methods.

WP 2 – Mobility: Investigates urban mobility demand and patterns, electric vehicles and grid interactions, vehicle-to-grid, synergies with localized renewable PV generation, potential of EVs to alleviate the duck curve (demand & supply mismatch).

WP 3 – Life Cycle Perspective: Investigates PV deployment and retro-fitting interventions from a life cycle environmental perspective, and develops high-resolution LCA calculators for PV systems and low-impact BIPV solutions.

WP 4 – Socioeconomics: Investigates drivers and barriers of urban PV deployment, market mechanisms, business models, novel concepts for local energy trading, and their significance on PV investment decisions, and conducts user surveys and interviews to understand social and behavioral implications of BIPV.

Learn more about the research of Powering-the-City: POW Website

CACTUS

CACTUS (Comprehensive Assessment and Computational Toolset for Urban Solar) is a Python-based set of tools and workflows for analysing integrated photovotlaic arrays. The repository provides a set of established workflows to move from low level of detail geometry and descriptive data through the automatic design of an array and the IV-based calculation of that array.

Explore RISE

RISE (Repository for Integrated Solar Energy) contains a database of integrated photovoltaic projects around the world. With each project you will find key performance metrics and images, as well as a link for further information.

Bombyx / Hive

Bombyx and Hive are Rhino Grasshopper tools for the assessment of embodied emissions (LCA) and energy. The combination of both tools offers a powerful, integrated workflow for architects and engineers to evaluate both operational and embodied emissions during the early stages of design.

Community Solar

Community solar (CS) involves the use of shared solar photovoltaic and energy storage systems within a local community, a concept that has grown in popularity in recent years. In this project, we aim to facilitate the coordination of decentralized CS investments through dynamic pricing and to improve the performance of CS by implementing land use regulation controls.

Segment for Solar (S4S)

Segment for Solar Facades (S4S) is a tool that utilizes instance segmentation methods to accurately estimate the solar energy potential of building facades. Facades vary greatly in their design, and the placement of solar panels must be tailored to each application. S4S takes into account the architectural details and variations of facades, providing a more accurate assessment of their solar potential.

Panelizer

Automatic facade panelization tool for optimal BIPV layouts, based on underlying high-resolution cell simulations.

ACACIA

ACACIA (parAmetric Configurator for A photovoltaiC life cycle Impact Assessment) is a web-based tool that lets you customize solar panels and instantly calculate their environmental impact across 14 key categories, including GWP and human toxicity. Architects, engineers, and planners can now make environmentally-informed decisions for sustainable PV design, all with real-time feedback on their choices.

Solar-EV-Charging

Solar-EV-Charging aims at integrating Electric Vehicles (EVs) to enhance the deployment of Photovoltaic (PV) systems in tropical Singapore. Leveraging a large-scale GPS-based mobile phone dataset, EV mobility patterns across Singapore are predicted, with detailed views zooming into specific communities. Aligning with localized PV energy potentials, EVs can thus be optimally used as time and spatially dynamic batteries.

SolarGAN

Assessing solar irradiance on facades is challenging due to complex urban features. SolarGAN helps by introducing a Deep Learning model that generates stochastic solar irradiance time series from simple fisheye images, offering a faster, data-driven alternative to labor-intensive simulations for robust BIPV energy system design.

Thermal VR

Thermal VR is an innovative system that integrates thermal feedback into virtual reality environments to enhance architectural design processes. By combining heat emitters with VR goggles, the system allows the user to experience both the thermal and visual aspects of architectural designs, offering a more immersive and intuitive evaluation. This approach, tested in virtual office settings, demonstrates the potential for climate-aware design.