January 2015
| Business World
87
70 per cent improvement in terms of overal-
lenergy efficiency. This is an impressive feat,
considering that laboratories often consume
up to ten times the energy of conventional
buildings due to ventilation requirements
and the need to keep operations running
24/7.
“It required a lot of innovation to reduce
energy consumption,” says Stuart.”For ex-
ample, we useddisplacement ventilation, hy-
dronic radiant slab heating and cooling, and
a very large solar thermal system that uses so-
lar panels to heat the water and the building
itself.”
“You’ll often find that the coldest days are the
brightest days, so there’s a lot of heat energy
available,” he adds.”The solar thermalsystem
is connected to the district energy system, so
when there’s excess heat available from the
solar panels, that heat is re-injected into the
district heating system and moved onto oth-
er buildings on the campus.” Integral Group
is very familiar with these features. Not only
have they experienced tremendous success
