The Solar Settlement at Schlierberg () is a 59-home PlusEnergy housing community in

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau or simply Freiburg is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fourth-largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg after Stuttgart, Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Its built-up area has a population of abou ...

, Germany. Solar architect

Rolf Disch Rolf Disch is a German architect, solar energy pioneer and environmental activist. Born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, Disch has dedicated particular focus to regional renewable and sustainable energy. As head of his own architecture firm, Ro ...

wanted to apply his PlusEnergy concept, created originally with his Heliotrope home, to mass residential production. The residential complex won awards, including House of the Year (2002), Residential PV solar integration award (2002), and "Germany's most beautiful housing community" (2006). It is one of the first housing communities in the world in which all the homes produce a positive energy balance and which is emissions-free and neutral.

Location

The Solar Settlement at Schlierberg is a 59-home PlusEnergy housing community at Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Strasse/ Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse adjacent to the Vauban quarter about 3 km from

city centre in South West Germany. Five rows of terraced houses with a Southern orientation are grouped to the left and right of a central access road, housing about 170 residents.

Buildings

Construction began 1999 and the settlement was completed in 2006. The houses contain 2-3 floors and were built with ecological building materials via wooden

post-and-beam construction Timber framing () and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden pegs. If the struc ...

from regional forests and prefabricated individual modules, PVC-free, and environmentally friendly insulation materials. Apartment sizes are from 81 to 210 m² and are rental and owner-occupied. An underground parking lot keeps the street car free.

Energy

The houses are oriented to the South for optimal passive and active use of solar energy. Thermal insulation is used according to

passive house Passive house () is a voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building that reduces the building's carbon footprint. Conforming to these standards results in ultra-low energy buildings that require less energy for space heating or co ...

standard, including glazing of the main facades with a

U-value The ''R''-value is a measure of how well a two-dimensional barrier, such as a layer of building insulation, insulation, a window or a complete wall or ceiling, resists the thermal conduction, conductive flow of heat, in the context of construct ...

of 0.5, resulting in a heat requirement of only 11-14 kilowatt hours per m² and year, which as of 2012 was 200 € (including maintenance costs) per year. Each house has a decentralized ventilation system with heat recovery. The settlement is connected to a local heating network. The south facing roofs are covered with photovoltaic modules with a generation potential of 445 kWp of the entire site. As of 2022, it is the largest residential roof-integrated photovoltaic system. PlusEnergy is a concept developed by Rolf Disch denoting a "structure's extreme energy efficiency so that it holds a positive energy balance", producing more energy than it uses. In 1994, Disch had created the first PlusEnergy house in the world with the completion of his private residence, the Heliotrope. According to Disch "PlusEnergy is a fundamental environmental imperative".

Awards

The settlement and the PlusEnergy house concept won the following prizes: * 1999, 1st prize "Innovation Award " of the German magazine Immobilien Manager * 2000, 1st prize "Holzkreativpreis" of BUND e.V. * 2001 / 2002, 1st prize "Architecture prize for single-family houses" from

Stern (magazine) ''Stern'' (, German for "Star", stylized in all lowercase) is an illustrated, broadly left-liberal, weekly current affairs magazine published in Hamburg, Germany, by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. Under the editorship (1948–1980 ...

* 2001, 2nd prize "Photovoltaic Architecture Prize Baden- Württemberg". *

European Solar Prize The European Solar Prizes are a series of awards which have been given annually since 1994 by the European Association for Renewable Energy (EUROSOLAR) located in Bonn, Germany. The prizes are awarded to individuals or organizations for outstand ...

from Eurosolar e.V. for Rolf Disch s commitment

References

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External links