National University of Singapore’s Building Net-Zero-Energy NZEB@SDE

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The 111-year old National University of Singapore, the oldest in the country and ranked #1 in Asia, laid the foundation for its upcoming net-zero energy building (NZEB@SDE), meant to be an addition to its School of Design and Environment. The School of Design and Environment, formerly known as the Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Real Estate, has been at the forefront of research and innovation for several years now. It was recently named the best in the world for construction research by the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, which also mentioned that three of its faculty members’ research papers were the most-cited globally. Professor Lam Khee Poh, who took over as Dean of the School of Design and Environment in July, says that buildings account for 40% of energy consumption (and a corresponding 40% of carbon dioxide emissions). Formerly with Carnegie-Mellon University in the United States, Poh has been an advocate of energy efficiency since the 1980s, when he was just a Ph.D. candidate there. He worked on the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens’ Center for Sustainable Landscapes, and in Singapore, he contributed to the National Library, which has been dubbed as ‘the world’s greenest building’.

Some details about the NZEB@SDE

Sustainability is his focus, and the new building, codenamed NZEB@SDE, will produce as much energy as it consumes. It is designed to generate and feed electricity into the grid on sunny days, and draw power from it during cloudy/rainy days. It has 91,644 square feet spread over six storeys, and features 1,200 solar panels on the roof. Poh adds the design is the result of much collaboration and teamwork. Despite Singapore being a tropical country, the building aims to minimize its dependence on airconditioning. For this, the building has an open plan that allows cross breezes in its ventilation. These are also meant to serve as public spaces, where students could interact with each other and hold exhibitions. Letting in as much natural light as possible is another key aspect of the building. Sensors detect the amount of natural light and dim/brighten the artificial lighting accordingly. No matter where you stand, you will always be guaranteed of a great view, which provides much needed inspiration to Architecture and Design students..

The School of Design and Environment, ranked #9 in the world, already has three buildings and when completed in 2019, NZEB@SDE will house its teaching faculty and research laboratories.

Singapore’s making efforts to deal with climate change

Desmond Lee, Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development, who presided over the groundbreaking ceremony, points out that Singapore is a signatory to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It has an ambitious target of achieving 36% lesser carbon emissions than 2005 levels in fourteen years. 95.5% of its energy is produced from natural gas – this came about after it decided to switch from more polluting petroleum-based fuel oil – and solar energy is undoubtedly the way forward. Its emissions cannot exceed the self-imposed limit of 65 million tonnes in 2030. The country has thus embarked on the SolarNova initiative to get government agencies to consider solar power

National University of Singapore’s Building Net-Zero-Energy NZEB@SDE

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Aleutia, a manufacturer of low-cost desktops and servers that has taking computers to every part of the world on its mind, wanted the do the same thing in rural Kenya, where villages have no electricity. To make sure that their computers were operational and of benefit to primary schoolchildren, they needed electricity to power their machines.

There was only source they could think of – solar energy.

They could assemble the solar panels on the roof, but some villages had no schools either (schooling is informal, with children assembling around a teacher under a tree which provides shade). So they needed to build schools as well, with roofs that enabled the installation of solar panels. They considered retrofitting used shipping containers, but these were too rusty and could not be transported to the interiors of Kenya – the rural roads were simply not designed for the movement of container trucks. A crane would also be needed to unload the container from the flatbed truck, getting a crane to the location was just as difficult. Even in areas where this was possible, the cost factor was too large to be ignored.

Solar classroom in a box

So they worked with design experts from the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Nairobi-based architects to come up with a low-cost, insulated structure that could be easily assembled and transported. Locally available building materials, such as corrugated tin roofs and cinder blocks were chosen, with a steel frame to hold everything in place. These could be transported in cattle trucks, and up to three

It takes two days to set up each classroom, and only then are the solar panels mounted on the roof. The computers are then unpacked and the ‘Solar Classroom in a Box’ comes to life. Aleutia’s computers do not have cooling fans inside them, and the British company explains that their cases are made of aircraft aluminum, allowing heat to dissipate easily – perfect for sub-Saharan Africa. The Intel Celeron-powered computers also have solid state drives, meaning they work really quietly and help students to concentrate on the learning process.

There is no internet, but the instructor’s computer is preloaded with an offline version of Wikipedia. There are 10 computers for students in each classroom. Aleutia’s founder Michael Rosenberg explains that for many, it will be their first time with a computer. It costs $10,000 to build each solar classroom, and another $10,000 for the computers. The idea is to introduce 20,000 Kenyan children to computers, and Kenya is the eighth country in Africa where Aleutia has brought computing to the masses. As of now, there are about 240 ‘Solar Classrooms in a Box’ in total

Aleutia’s other initiatives involve bringing distance learning for adults to Ghana, based on the same concept. They count UNICEF as one of their clients, and Rosenberg adds that technology has been helping them. Each generation of Intel processors is more energy-efficient than the previous one, and this is of immense value when every watt of solar power counts