Technical Tours

COBEE 2022 is proud to introduce our unique and world-renowned research facilities of the Centre for Zero Energy Building Studies (CZEBS) at Concordia University. Do not miss out the technical tour of our labs! 

Future Buildings Laboratory (FBL)

The Future Buildings Laboratory (FBL) is a unique test facility offering world-class multidisciplinary research and an educational platform to support research to advance knowledge, best practices, and innovation in sustainable buildings and infrastructure now and for the future. 

Buildings of the future need to be intelligent, self-sustained, and meet the needs of occupants at the minimum cost to the environment while being resilient and adaptive to climate change. This $1.27M CFI facility supports cutting-edge research in the following three innovative areas:

1. Energy positive building envelopes and integration with HVAC systems;
2. Intelligent building operation, and
3. optimization of residential nano-grid with renewable sources and electric vehicles.

FBL is designed to provide: 

• Flexible structure to accommodate different types of building envelopes and mechanical systems;
• Flexible interior space to be configured into single-family houses, open office spaces, or individual test cells; and
• Extensively instrumentation for weather conditions; hygrothermal state and environmental loads on building envelope; operational status of mechanical systems; indoor environmental quality and safety; and energy flow among solar, wind, fuel cell, electric vehicle, and buildings.

Solar Simulator - Environmental Chamber (SSEC) Facility

The Solar Simulator - Environmental Chamber Laboratory is a unique facility located at Concordia University in downtown Montréal, Canada. It was built with a $4.6-million grant through the Knowledge Infrastructure Program (KIP) jointly funded by the Government of Canada and Québec’s Ministère du développement économique, de l’innovation et de l’exportation (MDEIE).
This unique facility enables accurate and repeatable testing of solar systems and advanced building envelopes under standard test conditions with full simulated sun and indoor plus outdoor conditions. It consists of two major systems:

A large scale Solar Simulator designed to reproduce natural sunlight in order to test various solar systems such as photovoltaic modules, photovoltaic/thermal modules such as the JMSB solar system, solar air collectors, solar water collectors and a range of building-integrated solar systems.

Specific capabilities of the solar simulator (at room conditions):

• Consists of 8 special metal halide (MHG) lamps with an artificial sky to remove infrared radiation from lamps (lamps individually controlled and dimmable); meets the specifications of the relevant standards EN 12975:2006 and ISO 9806:2013.
• Collimation: approximately 80% of the emitted radiation lies in the range in which the incidence angle modifier of a regular flat plate collector varies by no more than 2%.
• Test specimen size: up to 2.4 m x 3.2 m.
• Less than ± 10% homogeneity (typically 5%), under 1-sun (depending on test specimen size).
• Customized solar air collector testing platform (able to test systems such as the JMSB BIPV/T system).

A two-storey high Environmental Chamber with a mobile solar simulator lamp field (Figure 3) that is used to test building technologies under controlled environmental conditions, by simulating exterior/interior microclimates (from arctic to desert).

Specific capabilities of the Environmental Chamber:

• Test building envelope components, such as advanced wall systems that may include solar energy utilization components, under a range of conditions from Arctic to desert.
• Develop test methods and design standards for predictable relative hygrothermal performance and durability of different building envelope systems under various climatic conditions.
• Test wall systems and rooms up  to 7 m high, for hygrothermal and energy performance, including solar electricity and useful heat generation.
• Temperature test range: -40 to 50 °C, under specific conditions.
• Temperature stability can be maintained within 1 °C.
• Relative humidity range between 20 – 95 % (depends on temperature).
• Specially designed windows that allow through sunlight produced by a 6-lamp mobile solar simulator.