CALIBRATION OF ENERGY SIMULATION MODEL FOR BIPV FACADE

Abstract

With the increasing demand for energy and depleting resources globally, there is an evident trend in adopting renewable technologies to reduce the energy consumption of a building. In Singapore, the abundance of sunlight makes solar energy the most viable renewable energy, thus there has been a rise in the implementation of photovoltaic (PV) systems in the building. The large number of high-rise buildings and limited roof area have increased the potential for the application of building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) façade. The façade of a building being the interface between the outdoor and indoor environment has a key function of maintaining the indoor thermal conditions. For BIPV façades, it affects the building’s thermal performance as the integrated PV modules may affect the overall U–value, solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of the façade glazing system, affecting the building cooling load and thermal comfort of the building occupants. Furthermore, different types of BIPV façade will have varied influences which can be investigated through energy simulations. This paper has presented a methodology for calibrating an energy simulation model for BIPV façade. The various BIPV façade models were validated within the statistical criteria of Mean Bias Error (MBE) and Coefficient of Variation of the Root Mean Square Error [CV(RMSE)] at ±5% and 15% respectively. The impacts of four types of BIPV façade were investigated: (1) ventilated semi-transparent, (2) non-ventilated semi-transparent, (3) ventilated opaque and (4) non-ventilated opaque BIPV façade. Through experiments and calibrated energy simulation models, it was found that ventilated BIPV façade leads to lower indoor temperatures and energy consumption than non-ventilated BIPV façade. Similarly, opaque BIPV façade also outperformed semi-transparent BIPV façade.