Australia’s first 6 Green Star rated building powered by Solar Shop

Pixel Building - Melbourne

Last week the covers came off Australia’s first carbon neutral office block - the Pixel building in Melbourne’s CBD – and Solar Shop is proud to have played a pivotal role in this revolutionary construction through the design and installation of its PV system.

Located in Carlton and constructed by Grocon, the Pixel building has been designed to generate more green energy than it uses through solar and wind generators on its roof. Over its lifetime, this energy will offset the embodied energy in the materials used in construction and will eventually get to a point where it is actually carbon positive for the environment.

In an Australian first, the Pixel installation is a high yield 6.3kW PV system consisting of 30 Suntech Pluto panels mounted on three dual axis tracking arrays and two fixed tilt arrays.

“One of the biggest design challenges was how to reduce the amount of shading on each panel throughout the course of the year,” says Neil Erenstrom - Project Manager, Commercial Division.

Neil Erenstrom, Project Manager, Commercial Division

“The rooftop is a tight space which also houses three wind turbines, has a four metre high roof over an adjacent lift shaft and is situated in the CBD. We had to optimise the exact positioning of the solar arrays to ensure the greatest possible yield was achieved.”

 The PV panels used in the system are all ‘reclaimed’, which assited Grocon in its aim for the Pixel building to achieve Australia’s first 6 Green Star rating.