In Brief

Best Publication on Environmentally Sustainable Design and Construction

Congratulations to Robert Hastings, Operating Agent of Task 11, and the many Task experts whose book, "Passive Solar Commercial & Institutional Buildings: A Sourcebook of Examples and Design Insights" , has been chosen by Environmental Building News as one of the "best publications" on environmentally sustainable design and construction.

Task 16 International Conference

In March 1996, over 1,000 professionals from the building trades, PV technology, the utility industry, research institutions and others attended the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association's "Building Energy" event in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This combined event included the 1st International Solar Electric Buildings Conference which was sponsored by SHC Task 16. Participants gathered to learn about the successes of building integrated PV systems in residential and commercial buildings. Task experts presented results of their collaborative research on component development (inverters, storage, mounting), system design (tools, potential, tradeoffs), and system integration. Experts also discussed the barriers and possible solutions for PV acceptance in the marketplace.

Solar Procurement Workshop

A workshop on solar procurement was organized by the SHC Programme in conjunction with the NUON Energy Company's international conference "Utilities and Solar Energy" in April 1996 in the Netherlands. The objective of the workshop was to learn about the market activities that utilities have initiated to improve the sale of solar domestic hot water systems. The major findings from the workshop were:

• Utilities are conducting market studies and looking at ways to improve procurement.
• The cost of solar domestic hot water systems can be lowered by 50% if production volume increases.
• International calls for tenders have lowered the price of larger solar systems in Germany.
• Procurement activities in the Netherlands and Denmark have realized price reductions by 20-30% when buying a large quantity of systems.
• Procurement activities lower prices as well as open the market as other utilities initiate similar activities.

A follow-up workshop to define a new SHC Task on solar procurement is planned for September 1996 in Sweden.

For more information contact Executive Committee member, Michael Rantil, Swedish Council for Building Research, fax: +46/8-653-7462, e-mail: michael.rantil@bfr.se.