Improvement of BIPV Efficiency by Application of Highly Reflective Surfaces at the Building Envelope

Dominika Knera, Pablo Roberto Dellicompagni and Dariusz Heim
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Dominika Knera: Department of Environmental Engineering, Lodz University of Technology, 90924 Lodz, Poland
Pablo Roberto Dellicompagni: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Materiales Avanzados y Almacenamiento de Energía de Jujuy (CIDMEJu), San Salvador de Jujuy 5707, Argentina
Dariusz Heim: Department of Environmental Engineering, Lodz University of Technology, 90924 Lodz, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-17

Abstract: The use of concentrated solar irradiation for the improvement of electric generation improvement has been implemented on different scales, mainly in photovoltaic systems. High-concentration Fresnel lenses are widely chosen for this approach in large installations, while low-concentration systems are rather applied in medium-low scales. For the latter, the improvement on electric performance was revealed, even when no solar tracking was implemented. The presented work aims to analyse a low-concentration photovoltaic installation by a numerical approach. First, the reflective surfaces were designed geometrically considering the optimal slope determined for each month. Subsequently, different simulation techniques were used separately for prediction of solar irradiation and energy production. Three criteria were selected to analyze power generation: the highest increase in total annual solar irradiance on panels with reflective surfaces, the highest total annual solar irradiance collected, and the optimal slope of panels for the entire year. The increase in energy was found to not exceed 10% in the winter months. Whereas in the spring and summer months the energy improvement is about 15–20%. Moreover, it was observed that the temperature of the proposed concentration photovoltaic system increased significantly, reaching more than 90 °C, while for traditional PV panels it did not exceed 75 °C.

Keywords: solar radiation; low-concentration systems; ray tracing; Monte Carlo; one-diode PV model; CIGS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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