PROJECT

Given the ongoing increasing urban density and the emerging need for sustainability of the built environment, the employment of renewable energy mechanisms within urban environments and their performance improvement become increasingly significant. Along these lines, open public spaces may be activated through use of appropriately designed urban elements that integrate the function of shelter and renewable energy production, i.e., shading users from direct solar radiation and generating energy from solar gains. Presently, photovoltaic systems are typically installed on building roofs and on the ground due to the relatively heavy weight structure of traditional silicon-based photovoltaic modules and the high energy production achieved. Moreover, the use of photovoltaic systems in open public spaces remains essentially unexploited. In achieving increased implementation potential and architectural integration possibilities of photovoltaics in open public spaces, as well as energy production performance, an adaptive lightweight and unitized prototype canopy structure with integrated thin-film photovoltaic modules placed on aluminum substrates, is developed in the current research project. The structure’s configuration and the photovoltaic modules orientation adapt to the sun movement, in improving energy production and shading performance. A cable net with a secondary system of continuous cables of variable length and struts, connected to primary perimeter beams is responsible for the stability and actuation of each structural unit of the system supporting the photovoltaic modules. In the development of the system, minimization of materials, construction time, energy consumption and operation costs are aimed at through automated fabrication, structural and technical simplicity and minimum number of actuation components. The adaptive urban canopy photovoltaics system is being investigated in simulations, and its structure, experimentally on a prototype unit in scale 1:10 that serves as proof-of-concept. The developed system is envisaged to provide technological innovation in achieving mass-customization and optimum design solutions with regard to urban, architectural, structural engineering, kinematics, control and energy performance criteria leading to a technology-driven activation of open public spaces, as well as thermally comfortable and sustainable urban environments.