At the core of a zero energy building is meeting all of a building’s power needs with on-site renewable energy. Because the Climate Innovation Center is so energy efficient and all-electric, we are able to utilize rooftop solar and battery storage to power 100% of our building’s electricity needs.
Key Considerations
We used our final energy modeling results (refer to step 2) to size the rooftop solar array to meet 100% of our building’s energy needs. We did this by noting the estimated annual electricity consumption of our building (measured in kilowatt-hours (or kWh) per year), and then worked with our solar design partners to design the rooftop solar array to generate enough power to meet at least 100% of our estimated consumption.
One challenge in meeting our building’s energy needs with solar power was to find enough space to locate all the solar panels we needed. Fifty-four 530-watt panels are located on the roof of the building. Due to the small footprint of our building and the need to use a portion of the roof for mechanical equipment, we added a solar canopy behind the building to hold an additional 16 panels, enabling us to reach our solar production requirements. The Climate Innovation Center’s solar installation has a 37.1 kW capacity with an estimated annual electricity generation of 53,318 kWh.
Specifics:
- Number of panels (roof: 54, canopy 16)
- Solar panels are 530-watt bifacial panels
Including on-site battery storage at the Climate Innovation Center is a central element of this project. We selected the largest commercial battery available, which was also eligible to participate in our local electric utility’s battery “demand response” program. This is important because it will not only allow our battery to store solar energy generated onsite for use in our building, but the battery also supports flexibility and resilience in the local electric grid. We’ll allow the utility company permission to access a portion of our battery’s power to help with frequency response and offset peak demand.
In addition, we designed our mechanical room to be large enough to accommodate the on-site battery, along with other equipment.
Battery Specifics:
- 90 kWh usable capacity
- 30 kW nominal power rating
Wattsmart Battery incentive program
The solar project at the Climate Innovation Center was made possible with support from Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky program customers.
Building Team for Step 6
