No. 294: Environment-conscious medium-sized office buildings (July 26, 2011)

As the trend to utilize natural energy is growing, Daiwa House will propose environment-conscious medium-sized office buildings that utilize natural energy including sunlight. They can save electricity 30% more than the existing office buildings and halve carbon dioxide emissions. The newly-developed technology is called “D’s Smart Office,” and the company simulates the environment performance and estimates how much power consumption is curbed starting in the design stage. Solar panels will be inserted in the newly-developed external wall frames instead of being put on the roof, and they have a generation capacity of about 10 kW per hour at the maximum. The D’s Smart Office comes with highly-insulated outer wall materials and windowpanes as standards. LEDs will be used for lighting and the Building and Energy Management System (BEMS) that controls air-conditioning and lighting automatically for energy conservation as options. The company plans to propose this new concept to medium-sized building with a floor space of less than 1,000 square meters. It has already built a branch office using this technology, and all other offices will be replaced by the newly-developed environment-conscious building.