How to benefit from BIPV system for designing energy-efficient commercial buildings

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) application is the most favorable power generation system over the world, mainly due to the remarkable advantages of solar energy compared to fossil fuels. A proper PV installation serves more than 20 years and its natural source energy is generally available. Also, the maintenance cost of the system is either zero or very small. In contrast, fossil fuel is limited, terminable, environmentally destructive and expensive because of the high costs of the generation and maintenance.Although building integrated photovoltaic is a relatively new technology in the industry of PV, the global market of BIPV is rapidly growing. “The global building-integrated photovoltaics market size is expected to reach USD 36.74 billion by 2025, (...) It is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.8% from 2019 to 2025.” (Grand View Research, June 2019 Report ID: GVR-1-68038-301-0). Proper regulations and financial supporting schemes from authorities are the main motivational drivers of expanding the BIPV installations. Considering the growth of the building industry and the remarkable potential of commercial buildings for PV mounting, this piece of work tries to present scientific investigations on how to improve the PV integration into the built environment.