Kindergarten in Einigen, Switzerland

“The old kindergarten in the village was too small,” says Beat J. Fischer, the architect who designed the Bijou Kindergarten with his team. The firm HMS Architekten AG evaluated the most suitable location for the new buildings on behalf of the municipality. “The new kindergarten, which reflects the municipality’s growing number of children, is now located right next to the elementary school.” The building, constructed using timber, features space at the rear for the after-school program with restrooms, and at the front for the kindergarten with coat rooms. Above this is a gallery that serves as an additional play area for the children. There is also plenty of space around the kindergarten.

From an energy efficiency perspective, the real highlight is the large 28-kW solar roof at 3S Thun, which faces east and west. The MegaSlate system serves as both a solar power plant and a roof covering: ““The planning was surprisingly simple,” recalls Beat J. Fischer, “the product is excellent, and 3S was there to assist us whenever we had questions.” Whenever possible, HMS Architects install solar modules. But they aren’t always able to integrate the system so beautifully into the building, as they did here in Einigen.

“The electricity is used directly at the kindergarten and elementary school,” explains Johan Pihlblad, managing director of EnergyOptimizer GmbH, the company that installed the solar roof. If the solar modules produce more electricity than is needed on-site, this “excess” solar power is fed into the public grid. “As installers, we first approached 3S over 10 years ago,” he recalls. “If we’re already producing local electricity, it’s all the better when it’s generated using products from the region.” EnergyOptimizer has had excellent results with the MegaSlate system: “Today, we are an exclusive partner of 3S,” says Johan Pihlblad happily. Especially for protected buildings, the MegaSlate system enables the construction of solar power systems in places where it would otherwise be impossible without the system’s sophistication.

Since the solar roofs have an east-west orientation, the solar yield is spread out over the entire day: “If the systems have an east-west orientation, the first sunbeams can be captured as early as the morning,” explains energy expert Johan Pihlblad. “There’s no production peak at noon, but on the west side we still capture the last sunbeams in the evening hours before the sun goes down.” This is particularly advantageous for single-family and multi-family homes: “The systems generate electricity in the morning when residents are still at home, and then again in the evening when they return from work.”

A more even distribution throughout the day also means less strain on the power grid. After all, the more solar power that is consumed on-site, the better. “While solar power was initially produced solely to meet household electricity needs, its importance is now growing steadily,” reports Johan Pihlblad: “Today, solar power is also used to power heat pumps and charge electric cars. Thanks to smart controls, we can manage consumption and are increasingly integrating weather data into the process.”

In purely mathematical terms, it would be possible to meet Switzerland’s entire power requirement with solar power based on the insolation the country receives, as shown by calculations from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy. However, with solar power currently accounting for only about 4.5% of power consumption, we are still light-years away from that goal. The kindergarten in Einigen, however, demonstrates just how beautiful and rewarding it can be to realize this potential. The municipality of Spiez, to which Einigen belongs, is determined not to let this effort fail. Currently, seven municipal buildings are equipped with solar power systems, and more are in the planning stages. Let’s hope that exponential growth in the industry will multiply the share of solar power by the time the first kindergarten children who spend their early school years here enter the workforce!