Faktor 3 - The Carbon neutral work space

The Carbon neutral work space

Together with DJOB Montana Group we are aiming to create the first CO2-neutral office in the world! We see a unique possibility to turn our ambition into reality through the integration of solar cells in the office inventory. We are helping the DJOB Montana Group with their designs and are giving them good advice on how to integrate solar cells.

This is a picture of the latest solar cell technology used in the project: tiny spheres that capture solar energy – invented by a Japanese company.

The project commenced in January 2008.

The Technological Challenge

How much daylight is available in an office? This can be very difficult to estimate and is crucial for dimensioning solar cells for indoor use. We have started investigating how much daylight is available in an office depending on distance to window, placement and orientation. This will be a very useful tool for the future, when we need to dimension solar cells to cover the standby energy consumption of our increasing number of electrical appliances.

Once we know more about the available indoor daylight, we need test facilities to evaluate the solar cells under low-light conditions at the right spectral distribution. Such facilities are not available on the market, so we are collaborating with Photonics DTU and the Danish Technological Institute to develop a solar cell tester with LEDs.