Abstract
Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) receives growing attentions due to both architectural and engineering favorability. Large commercial building envelopes present a great potential of utilizing solar radiation, especially in climate zones with rich solar resources. Most current studies have been focused on predicting and optimizing power generation of BIPV on designed envelope systems, which leaves limited room for performance improvement of BIPV. This study introduces a framework of an optimization method that formulates the best building envelope shapes and the most matching BIPV systems. A set of criteria are established to determine the best alternatives of envelope variations, upon which the power generation and economic impact of different BIPV systems are evaluated and compared. The proposed optimization process was demonstrated using a general commercial building design application in Egypt. The developed tool can help designers in achieving an optimized building envelope that is most suitable for PV integration.
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Abbreviations
- BIPV:
-
building integrated photovoltaics
- SAM:
-
System Advisor Model (a software tool)
- RETScreen:
-
Renewable Energy Technologies Screen (a software tool)
- WWR:
-
window-to-wall-ratio
- S:
-
one of the model surfaces
- SA, SB, SC, SD :
-
“A”, “B”, “C” and “D” refer to roof, southern, eastern and western facade surfaces in the model respectively
- SA′, SB′, SC′, SD′ :
-
these surfaces refer respectively to (SA, SB, SC, SD) after varying their orientation (e.g. SA will be SA′ if an orientation variation was applied for optimization)
- SA→SA′ :
-
applying an orientation variation (change the orientation) on SA to be converted to S A′
- SAn , SBn , SCn , SDn :
-
n is the serial number of an integration option for (SA, SB, SC, SD)
- SA′n , SB′n , SC′n , SD′n :
-
n is the serial number of integration option to be applied on (SA′, SB′, SC′, SD′)
- PVi :
-
i is the PV module number in the conducted PV database (as shown in the appendix)
- Alt i :
-
i denotes the number of a main alternative of the base model, these alternatives are generated by applying orientation variations
- Alt i-i′:
-
i′ denotes the number of a secondary alternative of the optimized model, which is generated from the main alternative Alt i
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Youssef, A.M.A., Zhai, Z.J. & Reffat, R.M. Design of optimal building envelopes with integrated photovoltaics. Build. Simul. 8, 353–366 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-015-0214-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-015-0214-y