InDeWaG

InDeWaG is the acronym of title "Industrial Development of Water Flow Glazing Systems" - Innovation action project funded under Horizon 2020, a Public Private Partnership on "BUILDINGS DESIGN FOR NEW HIGHLY ENERGY PERFORMING BUILDINGS". Support for innovation is provided to actions where partners focus together and join forces to remove existing barriers through market uptake measures in order to build capacity and provide support for sustainable energy policy implementation. Their mission is to foster sustainable energy investments and the uptake of technologies relevant to energy efficiency in buildings.

InDeWaG establish new technical knowledge and explore the concept of a new improved technology and product. Demonstration activity will show technical feasibility in a near to operational environment. InDeWag project introduce a new, disruptive building envelope system which has at least 15% building cost reduction potential and could be brought to industrial ripeness. The unique approach of InDeWaG is to enable maximum use of daylight by a transparent glass façade and at the same time meet nZEB performance. The consortium will undertake a quantitative analysis of different "modular" approaches: the active fluid flow glazing will combine water as heat transfer media with compressed air and solar-thermal energy conversion with BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaic), to enable the optimal ZEB performance for a multitude of building types in different climates.

Ambition

The ambition of InDeWaG project is to bring to industrial ripeness a façade and interior wall system based on radiant heating and cooling glass surfaces made from water and/or air flow glazing, abbreviated as WFG and AFG, which harvests solar energy for various use at large scale. Such building elements will be made ready for commercial application in the building sector and will be designed to become easy adoptable for 21st century façade and overall building technology, especially for cost effective ZEB technology with increased daylight use, variable ventilation and individual control comfort. The benefits of fluid flow glazing façade technology were proven over the past 8 years on the level of few demonstrator projects, but there are still many difficulties for the right practical implementation.

The concept for extending the State of Art in water flow glass façade systems is oriented towards a system that will be able to satisfy the cooling requirements and the hot water needs for a whole building. This is achieved through the integration of a series of transparent, translucent or opaque solar thermal absorbers which operate at different nominal temperatures, namely 30ºC for heating and seasonal energy storage, 60ºC for sanitary hot water supply and 90ºC for cooling through absorption chillers. In this way, a complete glass curtain wall façade will be able to deliver all the levels of thermal energy required by a building while retaining its architectural aesthetics. In addition, implementation of radiant surfaces inside the building will be investigated by building simulation with IDA ICE and TRNSYS. The components will be tested in Demonstrators situated in two different climate zones - Bulgaria and Spain.

A proven design method, a tested and certified façade system unit, application possibilities and a focused market analysis are crucial for the fast market uptake of the Fluid Flow Glazing. The industrial development of this exciting façade technology is the main goal of InDeWaG consortium, enabling an important step forward towards achieving nZEB standard /stated by the 2020 EU policy in the Directive 31 from May 19th 2010/.

InDeWaG

OBJECTIVES / VISION

The main objective of InDeWaG is to develop an industrial technology for fabrication of cost affordable general-purpose Fluid Flow Glazing façade elements, which give maximum daylight utilization and maximum interior comfort at energy consumption level of nZEB. In addition, also interior radiant elements will be developed. This technical development is accompanied by the development of an open access software tool for design of buildings with this new type of façade and interior radiant cooling and heating elements.

The cost reduction of at least 15% is achieved by following the LowExergy9 principle and adjustment of the temperature difference between the exterior environment and the interior to a minimum value which is relevant for significant reduction of HVAC energy demand and lighting energy consumption.

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InDeWaG Demonstrational Pavilion in Sofia, Bulgaria

InDeWaG project aims at bringing the water flow glazing (WFG) technology into industrial ripeness. One of the main milestones towards that goal is the construction of a pavilion with facades consisting of WFG elements. For that purpose InDeWaG partners have designed a pavilion that will serve as demonstrator for this new technology. It is shaped like a glass box with a square plan measuring 7.24 meters by 7.24 meters. The glass envelope is composed of WFG modules on the East, West and South facade, while the North facade will be opaque. The roof, floor and north facade are well insulated and will contribute to the low energy requirements of the pavilion, which is designed to achieve nearly zero energy building standard according to the Bulgarian legislation. The transparent facade elements are with a due East, West or South orientation at 3.00 m height from the floor to the ceiling.

The glazing units developed within the InDeWaG project and installed in the pavilion use circulating water in the chamber between the glass panes to capture solar radiation and transport the generated heat through a pipe system for different purposes such as heating, preheating, domestic hot water, storage or dissipation of excess energy. Via a circulation of heated or cooled water within the glass chamber in the window the whole facade may act as either a heating or cooling unit.

Inside the demonstrator the space will be divided by interior partition walls also made of glazing elements with circulating water. The temperature of the fluid inside them will be regulated and they will be used as radiant cooling or heating devices providing the conditioning of the inner space. The pavilion itself is meant to be a place for meetings, workshops and seminars as well as a demonstrational pavilion. It will be equipped with a monitoring system, which will show in real time the behavior of the WFG and the energy management system.

The monitoring will include measurements of energy gains and demand during the whole year, validation by means of real data of mathematical models for internal solar heat distribution, validation of nearly zero energy strategy based on generation of electric energy by photovoltaic panels. The pavilion includes installation of on-site energy generation plant (roof-top photovoltaics), heat pump and energy management system. The Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) system consists of a primary circulation circuit between the heat pump and the facade/partition wall elements and a secondary circuit inside each WFG element. The primary circuit transports energy from the heat pump to each WFG element. According to the current demands the heat pump is responsible for both - heating and cooling purposes. Since there is no seasonal heat storage available, energy surplus from the WFG is measured and dissipated. In the same manner, periods of energy demand are measured and the difference between surplus and shortage provide the results for the final annual energy balance.

The pavilion is planned to achieve nearly Zero Energy Building standard according to the Bulgarian definition, where the InDeWaG facades shall have main contribution. The demonstrator will be constructed in the campus of the Bulgarian Academy of Science (BAS) located in Sofia, Mladost region. Expected opening is planned for the spring of 2018. The monitoring and operation of the pavilion will be the responsibility of the Central Laboratory for Solar Energy and New Energy Sources (CL SENES), one of InDeWaG's project partners.