When clean energy becomes a reality

The Pamplona City Council has recently installed the prototype Plug&Play solar roof on the Municipal Police building to provide energy for self-consumption.

The Pamplona City Council has recently installed a Plug&Play solar roof on the building of the Municipal Police. This is one of the first smart solutions developed within the EU-funded project STARDUST to be implemented in the city.

This innovative roof is a complete modular, insulated wooden deck with high quality and high energy performance. It includes Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) that will provide the building with electrical energy. It is the sixth municipal photovoltaic installation for self-consumption in Pamplona. The wood used to produce it comes from sustainable forestry.

The roof is a ‘2 in 1’ system (roof plus photovoltaic installation) connected to the grid inside the building. It is fixed on the current roof and will serve as a complement for waterproofing and to improve thermal insulation, although the system can be used as a sole roof in other constructions. It comprises 266 solar panels for a total power of 77,14 kWp, a surface area of about 900m2 and an estimated production of 95 MWh per year, which represents between 10 and 15% of the building’s consumption.

The roof will be part of the micro-grid (developed by STARDUST coordinator CENER) that includes a 200kWh second-life lithium-ion battery made out of reused batteries from electric vehicles (provided by the local startup BeePlanet Factory, also partner in STARDUST) and charging points for municipal electric vehicles, as well as a regulation equipment connected to the electrical network of the building. Moreover, the Municipality has just purchased two V2G (Vehicle-to-grid) vehicles, thus enabling a comprehensive demonstration of integration of local RES and mobility through ICT.

To complete this demonstration, the energy consumption of the Datacenter located in this municipal building will be reduced. The chillers, which maintain the temperature of the computing facilities, will be integrated with a heat recovery system. This system will produce hot water out of the condenser to cover the energy consumption of the showers at the Police Headquarters nextdoor.