Crack issues afflicting a building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) system are major concerns in terms of the system’s maintenance and power degradation. Although there may be many circumstances that bring about cracks in BIPV modules during the installation process, identifying the degradation of PV module efficiency resulting from the effects of cracks tends to be a very difficult task unless actual indoor or outdoor tests or detailed electroluminescence imaging tests are conducted. Many current studies have demonstrated that cracks may or may not impact the output performance of PV modules depending on the damage levels or where the damage is located. For BIPV applications such as replacement for building materials, there is still a lack of information and case studies addressing crack issues in a quantitative manner for evaluating BIPV output performance. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to investigate the effects of cracks in BIPV modules on power outputs and to identify detailed relationships between the cracks and power output based on experimental and simulated analysis. An experimental facility located in Daejeon, South Korea, was used to gather data from cracked and non-cracked BIPV modules. By using the field-measured data and facility’ information, a simulation model was developed using SolarPro software, and a simulated-based analysis was conducted to evaluate the impact of cracks in BIPV modules on output values after proper validation of the model. The results from this study reveal that cracks in BIPV modules exhibit significant degradation in BIPV modules’ outputs of up to 43% reduction during the experimental period. From the annual comparative results, output degradations of 34.6–35.4% were estimated when the BIPV modules included cracks. As a result, the cracks in the BIPV modules could be carefully addressed as issues occurring in the BIPV installation process.

The application of a building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) module to an elevation means that the factors causing performance losses in a BIPV are relatively high compared to a photovoltaic (PV) that is installed at the optimal angle. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the performance loss factors of BIPV and to examine the characteristics of each performance loss factor. Measured data were used to analyze the performance and loss factors (module temperature, dust and soiling, power conditioning system (PCS) standby mode, direct current–alternating current (DC-AC) conversion loss). A performance ratio of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61724 was used to power the generation performance analysis. The impact analysis of each loss factor is analyzed by using difference of the power generation, the module efficiency, irradiation, and the performance ratio according to the existence of a loss factor. The performance ratio analysis result of this BIPV system shows a range of 66.8–69.5%. The range of performance loss due to each loss factor was as follows; module temperature: 2.2–6.0%, dust and soiling: 2.2–23.1%, PCS standby loss: 4.9–15.7%, DC–AC conversion loss: 4.1–8.0%. Because the effects of the loss factors are different depending on the installation conditions, the performance loss of the system should be minimized by taking this into consideration in the design stage in the BIPV.