Can integration of solar systems within buildings provide a different kind of air-conditioning? A German research team recently announced a “modular external wall” that supplies power from solar panels, which provides heating and cooling to rooms.
The external wall developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Society targets old and depleted buildings with no energy-conserving equipment, especially offices, administrative buildings, and schools between the 1950s and 1970s. The team pointed out that this particular design is able to attain the existing eco-friendly standard for old buildings at a faster speed and lower cost.
According to the given information, each external wall measures at 125cm in width and 30cm in depth, and can be applied on rooms with a maximum dimension of 24㎡, where the outer side of the wall is also filled with solar panels that can provide enough power for a mini heat pump, which generated 3-4J of heat.
The fan coils extract heat from outside if heating is configured, and it would be the other way round for cooling, where heat is extracted from within the room and released outside. A distributed ventilation system is also available to maintain “respiration” for the room.
The external wall can also be naturally connected to the grid during days of bad weather and insufficient solar generation. As pointed out by the team, the replacement of an existing wall with a solar one will only take several hours. It is a better option than renovating an entire building, and the next door neighbors will not have to move away during the construction period. A further optimization in the technology will facilitate a better module façade.
This type of modular external wall is applicable to 30% of the buildings that were constructed between the 1950s and1990s in Germany. These buildings consume about 3,200GWh of power each year, and the adoption of the modular external wall will reduce the figure to 600GWh.
(Cover photo source: Fraunhofer Society)