PVSITES: Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Technologies and Systems for Large-Scale Market Deployment

Abstract

Abstract:The large potential for energy savings in buildings led the EU Commission to adopt the 2010/31/EU Directive on the energy performance of buildings with the objective that all new buildings are Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) by 2020. Renewable energy technologies, and in particular the integration of photovoltaic systems in the building environment offer many possibilities to play a key role within the NZEB scenario. The objective of PVSITES project is to drive BIPV technology to a large market deployment by demonstrating an ambitious portfolio of building-integrated solar technologies and systems, giving a forceful, reliable answer to the market requirements identified by the industrial members of the consortium in their day-to-day activity.

A Conceptual Framework for a Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) Educative-Communication Approach

“…This was towards giving a definite and professionally reliable answer to the market requirements pre-identified by the industrial members of the consortium. It focuses on high impact demonstration and dissemination actions to be executed using cost-effective renewable generation, reduction of energy demands and smart energy management [75,77]. Plate 1.…”

“…Based on these requirements, we reviewed related studies on BIPV adoption, and we identified three (3) studies which focus on developed approaches to communicate BIPV. These include the International Energy Agency-IEA Task 41-SubTask C three-stage approach from client to design team to design-communication tools [74], the European-based use of "an ambitious demonstration project portfolio" [75], and an Architectural Integration Qualities (AIQ) model which initiates and focuses discussions on preferences for architectural integration of energy-producing solar shading [76]. The sub-sections which follow state an overview of these studies used to deduce core requirements for the proposed approach as a starting point for the design process.…”

Spectrally-Selective Energy-Harvesting Solar Windows for Public Infrastructure Applications

“…While such BAPV systems generate adequate electricity, their transparent area fraction is limited, which often makes them unattractive in architectural installations. A number of recent studies have been dedicated to uncovering the potential of renewable energy technologies including photovoltaics for reaching the important goal of net-zero energy consumption in buildings and infrastructural installations [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Figure 1 summarizes three well-known commercialized and recent examples of the relevant technologies and also provides the data on the currently-available electric power generation capacities per unit wall area.…”

A simplified skyline-based method for estimating the annual solar energy potential in urban environments

“…During recent decades, multiple software suites have been developed to compute the solar irradiation impinging on a surface and the energy yield of a PV system. Among these, we can find: In My Backyard tool 7 , the PVSITES project 8 , different raytracing-based simulation tools [9][10][11] , various GIS-based methods 12,13 and many others 14 . The vast majority of these available tools calculate the hourly irradiance impinging on the plane of array (POA) considering the radiation intensity and distribution over the sky, the module tilt and orientation, and the objects surrounding the target surface 15 .…”