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Article: Renewable energy for existing buildings.(SUSTAINABILITY: Renewable Energy)
- Article from:
- Buildings
- Article date:
- October 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Stamats Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Until recently, the green building movement focused on the construction of new buildings; however, 75 to 85 percent of all buildings that exist today in urban areas will still be around in 2030. Thus, the more complicated task at hand is greening our existing building stock. Once all efforts have been made to optimize the energy efficiency of an existing building, the renewable energy technologies described here are some of the easiest to implement.
By mimicking a plant's transformation of sunlight into energy, photovoltaic (PV) systems can be used to produce electrical energy for a building. The electricity produced is stored in ...