About SEED

The Solar Application Centre within the Solar Energy Exploration and Development (SEED) centre is comprised of state-of-the-art laboratories to create novel silicone materials that help improve the cost, efficiency, durability and performance of solar cells, solar power modules and photovoltaic installations. The Silicon Technology Centre houses laboratories and chemists focusing on silicon-based innovations. Their research aims to open new possibilities for materials and application development, discover ways to further improve the sustainability of our technologies and processes, and enable collaborative research to continue to meet our customers’ current and future needs. Confirming Dow Corning’s commitment to enabling innovation, the SEED centre enhances our ability to work with customers, academic researchers and policymakers to advance technologies that address some of today’s greatest societal challenges.

SEED’s Sustainable Design

Built with the latest technologies in energy efficiency, the SEED acts as a demonstration of what can be achieved in sustainable innovation using silicon-based materials in high performance building. This combination of technologies, together with the use of renewable energy sources on the site - such as solar panels and a geothermal heat pump - has a measurable impact on the new facilities' environmental footprint:

• Heating costs are anticipated to be 75% lower and electricity costs 70% lower than an equivalent conventional construction.
• An air-recycling system will allow the laboratories to achieve a 65% energy gain compared to conventionally designed labs, representing savings of 290 tons of CO2 per year.

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