SUSTAINABILITY IN BUILT ENVIRONMENT

CASE STUDY:

Pusat Tenaga Malaysia GEO Building (Green Energy Office Building)

NAME: HOTECK TSENID: 0302690SUBJECT: ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCECOURSE: DIPLOMA IN INTERIOR DESIGN

(SEM 6)LECTURER: MS NORMA

CONTENT

GBI Introduction 1-2

Pusat Tenaga Malaysia GEO Building 3-4

BIPV System 5

Radiant Cooling (Underfloor Cooling) 6

Lighting system and Indoor Environment 7

Conclusion 8

Green Building Index (GBI)

The Green Building Index is a rating tool for buildings to promote sustainability in the built environment and raise awareness among Developers, Architects, Engineers, Designers, Contractors and the Public about the different environmental issues and our responsibility to the future generations.

The GBI rating tool provides an opportunity for top developers and building owners to design and construct green, sustainable buildings that can provide energy savings, water savings, a healthier indoor environment, better connectivity to public transport and the adoption of recycling and greenery for their projects and reduce our impact on the environment.

Malaysia’s Green Building Index was specifically developed to fix Malaysian-tropical climate, environmental and development context, culture and social needs and is created to define green buildings by establishing a common language and standard of measuring points and ratings. Besides that, GBI also promotes integrated, whole-building design that provides a better environment for all. GBI recognize and reward environmental leaders. Transforming the build environment to reduce its negative environment impact and ensure new building remains relevant in the future and existing building are refurbish and upgraded to improve the overall quality of our building stock.

A green building focuses on increasing the efficiency energy, water and material resources. Other benefits of green buildings are, green buildings are designed to save energy and resources, recycle materials and minimize the emission of toxic substance throughout its life cycle. Designs of green building must have a balance therefore, green buildings harmonies with the local climate, traditions, culture and surrounding environment. Beside the positive impacts on the environment, green buildings also play a massive role in human health improving quality of human life whilst maintaining the capacity of the ecosystem at local and global levels.

The GBI rating tool consist of Non-Residential New Construction (NRNC), Residential New Construction (RNC), Non–Residential Existing Building (NREB), Industrial New Construction (INC), Industrial Existing Building (IEB), NREB: Data Centre, NRNC: Data Centre, Township.

There are 6 GBI Building Rating Criteria the first, Energy Efficiency (EE), Indoor Environmental Quality (EQ), Sustainable Site Planning and Management (SM), Materials and Resources (MR), Water Efficiency (WE), Innovation (IN).

Firstly, at Energy Efficiency (EE), in the design point of view there has to be minimum EE performance. Lighting zoning and renewable energy also has to be taken to consideration. Another important point for energy efficiency is commissioning. Enhance commissioning and post occupancy commissioning. Lastly, EE verification and sustainable maintenance is put in consideration while rating the energy efficiency.

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Indoor Environmental Quality (EQ), two factors in EQ. Air Quality and Thermal Comfort. In air quality, GBI focuses on minimum IAQ performance, environmental tobacco control, carbon dioxide monitoring and control, and indoor air pollutants. Where as in thermal comfort, thermal comfort control and air change effectiveness is emphasized.

Sustainable Site and Management (SM), the four main priority of SM is site planning, construction management and transportation. Examples of site planning are, site selection and environmental management. In construction management, earthworks, pollution control and workers site amenities are important. For transportation, 3 main criteria would be, public transport accessibility, green vehicles priority and parking capacity.

Material and Resources (MR), green building should reuse and recycle materials. Material reuse and selection and recycle content materials. Manage sustainable resources such as regional materials, sustainable timber, create storage and collection of recyclables and construction waste management. Lastly, green products, referents and clean agents.

Water Efficiency (WE), green building can do this by, implementing rainwater harvesting, water recycling, water efficient irrigation, and water efficient fitting, metering and leak detection system.

Lastly, Innovation (IN), innovation in design and environment design initiatives and green building index facilitator is assigned to indicate the innovation by the Green Building Index.

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Pusat Tenaga Malaysia GEO Building (Green Energy Office Building)

In recent years, Malaysia has been moving towards greener mindset. Nowadays, there is more sense of environmental awareness than before in this country though it is still at a low level compared to countries like Denmark, Germany, or Japan. There has been progress over the years and recently hype is green buildings. Following the Green Building Classification. Platinum, Gold, Silver and Certified.

Regardless of all the Green Building Index approved building in Malaysia. The green building I choose for the case study building is Pusat Tenaga Malaysia GEO Building to represent sustainability in a build environment.

PTM GEO BUILDING, located in Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. Green Building Classification is under Certified. Construction started on March 2006 and was completed on October 2007. Total size of building is 43,060 SF. Owned by Ministry of Energy, Green Technologes and Water: Malaysia Energy Centre(Pusat Tenaga Malaysia). GEO Building was designed by Dato Ruslan Khalid Architects. Cost of project was $6.03 million.

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Pusat Tenaga Malaysia (Malaysia Energy Centre), previously known as ZEO (Zero Energy Office) Building is officially Malaysia’s first Green Building Index (GBI) Certified Building. Planned as a showcase of energy-efficient building in 2005. Malaysia’s first Green Building Index (GBI) Certified Building. Now it is known as Green Energy Office Building recognized in short GEO building. It is also Malaysia’s first completed green-rated office building.

The Geo building is a pilot project, it is the only such building in Malaysia that integrates the Energy Efficiency, EE and Renewable Energy, RE in one working demonstrator building.

The GEO building was designed to be very energy efficient, thus consuming vey little fossil fuels with energy index design of 65kWh/m2year compared to typical conventional office building in Kuala Lumpur of 250 to 300kWh/m2year. It was built on a concept which focused on the green technology innovation to minimize energy demand load, efficient use of fossil fuel via taking into account the environmental concern, the usage of renewable energy but without compromising user comfort and safety. Some of the amount of energy used by the building is counter balanced by the amount of energy generated by its own renewable energy power generation system.

Its impressive Building Energy Intensity of 35 kWh/m2/year is about a third of that of the previous most energy efficient building in the country, the LEO (Low Energy Office) Building of the now Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water.

Designed at a time when the awareness of building green is still at its infancy in this country, its energy efficient features scored full points under the Energy Efficiency and Innovation criteria of the GBI.

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BIPV System

One of the many Eco features of the GEO Building is, The Building Integrated Photovoltaic, BIPV panels all integrated into the building design such that it look both architectural and aesthetically pleasing, as well as providing electricity to the building users. This result in the successful incorporation of advance energy efficiency technology also combines energy generation from renewable source. The already proven Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) integrated in the building design adds further advantage to the environment since it is non- polluting and abundantly available for free thus reducing the use of fossil fuel.

Four BIPV systems were incorporated into the building as part of the building element during the design stage of the building. In all, four different solar BIPV systems utilizing four different technologies have been installed into PTM’s GEO.System A, Poly Crystalline module at the Main roof area. System B, Amorphous Silicon module at the second main roof. System C, Semi transparent see through at the atrium. Lastly, System D Integrated Mono Crystalline located at the car park.

Besides that, an additional feature is added to System A and System B where it will act as cooling tower at night. The chiller runs only at night and the cooling is stored in the concrete floor slabs by running cold water pipes embedded in the slabs. At night, the water normally sent to the cooling tower is trickled over two solar photovoltaic roofs and collected again for another cycle. These measures keep the water bill to only RM50 a month.

Radiant Cooling (Underfloor Cooling)

The floors of the building take on a cooling effect role, thanks to the insertion of embedded Cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) pipes in this building within the concrete floor slabs The radiant cooling and ice storage was charge at night and stored at the floor slabs and ice storage tank respectively. During the day, the source of cooling of these sources was distributed by the building's control system to the radiant cooling and air convection system respectively. Ambient cooling and evaporation during the night cools the water for use the following days. Radiant floor take advantage of effective temperature.

GEO achieves 75% of its cooling requirements by radiant cooling. While the remaining 25% of its cooling requirement is achieved by the convention air-conditioning system, powered by electricity generated by its own BIPV system.

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Lighting system

A typical Malaysian building would have been all walled up, and the dark interiors lit with multiple artificial lights but not so the ZEO building. It is 100% day lit during daytime. It appears to embrace the sun and this is just one of the many tricks employed in the building to conserve energy. This building applied good orientation for day lighting by having majority of its windows and doors faced towards North and South.

In addition to the windows orientation facing north and south only, the building was installed with adequate insulation at the roof and wall particularly facade facing east and west. The building is air tight to avoid internal cold air escapes to the exterior. All this helps to avoid the cooling system works longer hours.

Besides, the building itself has step-in design, which provide self-shading. The roof also transparent and thus allows light coming into the rooms on top of he building.

Indoor Environment

The design of the building only allows double-glazing windows installed on facade facing north and south. The windows are consists of two pane glass which functioned to filter heat from both infrared and ultraviolet rays from the sun radiation before entering the building interior.

Careful thought has also gone into the preservation of air quality achieved via the process of dehumidification. Given the fact that dehumidification of air quality in buildings consumes a great amount of electricity, a desiccant heat wheel that operates by replacing in coming hot and humid fresh air with cooler and drier exhaust air is used to counteract this effect.

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Conclusion

The amount of energy saved by this building is truly extraordinary. When we look into detail of how a green building actually works. There is actually a lot of thought and design put to it. According to Poul Erick Kristenen, Managing Director of IEN Consultants Sdn. Bhd. Malaysia. He said “with hot and humid air leaking into the building, additional energy is needed to dehumidify buildings. While Malaysia neither is nor used to building air tight building, what seems to be lacking is the awareness of a better usage of materials in different conditions.

To achieve such green buildings, owners or users, Architects, Civil Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Landscape Architect, Quantity Surveyor, Contractor, Vendors Sub-cons, Energy Consultant. They must all work together to achieve the goal.

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