The Use of Solar Energy in Heifei Grand Theatre(1)

Recently, the ‘Two Sessions’ of the National People’s Congress, which is a significant national conference in China, was held in Beijing. In the ‘Two Sessions’, government should report their work and goals. In the field of architecture, ‘Green Architecture” was again pronounced to be a central issue in the following years. This reminds me of the ‘Two Sessions’ in 2013, where mandated topics like “sustainable construction”, “eco-footprint” and “clean energy” were discussed.

However, how is the conduction of those ‘green’ proposals?

In Hefei, the capital city of Anhui Province, the 57,000m2 Hefei Grand Theatre has attracted considerable attention from the public as one of the pioneers of green architecture.

Located near the Swan Lake on Huaining Road, the theatre is with massive curved roof, which is likened to waves in the original design concept. This typically literal approach to design is quite normal, but the attractive thing is the solar energy system inside the roof structure.

With the purpose of meeting energy-saving standard, solar panels with an area of 1352m2 have been equipped to absorb solar energy. The energy received will be transferred into electricity and help maintain the temperature all year round. Consequently, a large deal of cost will be save. Some data showed as follow could somehow demonstrate the advantages.

The solar panel system with a design life of 30 years could generate 120,000 KWH of energy annually. At the same time, a total of 3425 tons of CO2 is said to be reduced every year, and the amount of SO2 produced could be 11.1 tons less than before.

Simply in accordance with the data, the solar system of Hefei Grand Theatre should be considered as a success in China. The automatic system could not only save the cost of labour, but also become a model of much-vaunted green architecture.

However, could all buildings benefit from solar energy system nowadays? Maybe not. It is quite doubtful whether the policy of green architecture could be widespread, especially when we consider the various functions and locations of buildings; with varying degrees of servicing required and the fluctuating availability of sunlight. More detailed discussion will be showed in the next blog.

Reference: http://news.frbiz.com/hefei_theater_grid_solar_pv-237104.html