The concept of building an integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system attracts increasing attention due to its promising performance in energy-saving. However, the efficiency of the BIPV system may rapidly deteriorate when the photovoltaic (PV) array is partially shaded by clouds and shadows of the surrounding buildings. This paper presents a novel configuration of a large-scale BIPV system, and the intelligent maximum power point tracking approach is also studied. First, the PV panels installed on each side of the building are designed as the BIPV units (BIPV-Us) with different sizes, and the size of each BIPV-U is determined by the location and surroundings of the target building. Second, the numerical model of the BIPV system is established as an optimization problem, and an intelligent algorithm in our previous work, namely, decentralizing and coevolving differential evolution, is employed to solve this problem. Finally, the proposed BIPV system is tested by simulation experiments. According to the experimental results, the proposed BIPV system and its intelligent control approach can achieve promising performance under complex urban conditions.

In recent years, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technology has been widely used in the planning, design and maintenance of urban distributed photovoltaic arrays (UDPA). However, the existing studies rarely concern the UAV swarm scheduling problem when applied to remoting sensing in UDPA maintenance. In this study, a novel scheduling model and algorithm for UAV swarm remote sensing in UDPA maintenance are developed. Firstly, the UAV swarm scheduling tasks in UDPA maintenance are described as a large-scale global optimization (LSGO) problem, in which the constraints are defined as penalty functions. Secondly, an adaptive multiple variable-grouping optimization strategy including adaptive random grouping, UAV grouping and task grouping is developed. Finally, a novel evolutionary algorithm, namely cooperatively coevolving particle swarm optimization with adaptive multiple variable-grouping and context vector crossover/mutation strategies (CCPSO-mg-cvcm), is developed in order to effectively optimize the aforementioned UAV swarm scheduling model. The results of the case study show that the developed CCPSO-mg-cvcm significantly outperforms the existing algorithms, and the UAV swarm remote sensing in large-scale UDPA maintenance can be optimally scheduled by the developed methodology.

Under the background of smart city, the concepts of “green building” and “net-zero energy building” become more and more popular for reducing the building power consumption. As a result, the technologies related to the design and intelligent control of building integrated green energy system develop rapidly in recent years. In this study, the topological structure of large-scale building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system is analyzed, and a novel data-driven maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methodology is developed. To be specific, several characteristic-variables for achieving efficient MPPT of large-scale BIPV system are proposed, and the data-driven MPPT model based on deep neural network (DNN) is developed. Then, the developed characteristic-variables and DNN model are verified by a comprehensive set of numerical experiments. The optimal DNN structure is also verified in detail in this study. In addition, in order to dynamically track the degradation of photovoltaic module and overcome its influence on DNN model, the time-window mechanism of BIPV knowledge-base is introduced, and the optimal length of time-window for different DNN structures is verified by numerical experiments. Experimental results show that the DNN model with developed characteristic-variables and time-window mechanism achieves accurate and robust forecasting performance on the MPPT of large-scale BIPV system.