The Active Classroom contains a laboratory and classroom and will be used for teaching students. It will also be monitored closely, enabling researchers to test and validate building performance in an education facility, and to see how users interact with the technology.
Demonstration at a building scale is vital in evaluating and proving techniques and technologies, before they will be adopted by the construction sector, regulators and consumers.
Our demonstration programme has been designed to test and prove the buildings as power stations concept in a range of uses. Whilst the Active Classroom is designed for use in the education sector, previous demonstrators have included The Pod, our fi rst building as a power station, which is used as a cabin for car park attendants at the Bay Campus; the Solar Heat Energy Demonstrator (SHED) warehouse facility in Margam; and the SOLCER House, which was constructed in partnership with Cardiff University and is now used as an office.
For buildings as power stations to become reality not only requires the technology to work; it also requires new ways of working in the construction industry, new business models and a new skills base.
It is only by working together on real projects with real companies, by bringing together those in the construction, energy and systems industries, that our vision of a more sustainable, more prosperous environment can be achieved.