Buildings that are also power plants

As Tata Steel in India closed the financial year 2010-11, its European operations opened a fresh chapter in its quest to create technologies that could potentially allow future building to become zero carbon emitting structures and also generate their entire energy needs. Tata Steel Europe has set a challenging benchmark to generate power from these green buildings at cost on par with conventional grid power.

The new building systems that could potentially generate its own power, with zero dependence on any external or grid sourced power, could be ready in the next three to five years, said company officials at the newly-opened Sustainable Energy Envelope Centre (SBEC) in Shotton, North Wales, UK.

The new green building technologies will be based on steel sheets produced by Tata Steel that will be coated with special paints that can be fixed on the building surfaces. The plan is to use these new technologies on both existing buildings (as a bolt on option) and also on new buildings of the future.

An estimated 40 per cent of CO2 emission in countries like UK are from building that use power to heat, cool, lighting etc.

Uday Chaturvedi, chief technical officer of Tata Steel in Europe, said, “Buildings are responsible for almost half of UK’s carbon emissions, half of its water consumption, around a third of its landfill waste and a quarter of all raw materials used in the economy. This means that the UK’s sustainable development targets cannot be met without a fundamental change to the way in which buildings are constructed. The steel industry can be part of the solution and these projects demonstrate our commitment to helping to develop a sustainable future.”

Theoretically, the 200 sq meters of steel sheets produced at the Shotton facility, when converted into products with the new technology, can dramatically improve topline by as much as five to six times, company officials said. The payback period of the end users of the buildings with the new technologies is estimated between three to six years, depending on whether these are retro-fitted on existing buildings or integrated into new buildings.

SBEC will be a showcase for sustainable products and used to test and monitor new integrated heating, energy and ventilation systems on the fabric of the building. At SBEC, a team of researchers and technologists will create building façades – the walls and roofs – which will transform the buildings from being energy consumers into energy generators.

Peter Strikwerda, managing director of Tata Steel Colors (that develops and manufacturers pre-finished steel) said the basic idea is to “micro generate (energy) in macro scale.”  Potentially, the idea could create a new generation of technologies that, for example, can also be used to power electric cars with energy produced from these buildings.

Tata Steel’s involvement in the £6.5 million SBEC project is just the latest in a number of investments in technology with the aim to improve sustainability, both of the steel industry and industries it services.

In addition, Tata Steel and Dyesol recently announced that they had decided to expand their £11 million joint photovoltaics development project based at the PV Accelerator Centre at the Tata Steel site at Shotton.

Meanwhile, the £20 million SPECIFIC project at Baglan in South Wales has been set up to study other new coatings for steel and other substrates that can generate power.