Variations of PV Panel Performance Installed over a Vegetated Roof and a Conventional Black Roof

Mohammed J. Alshayeb and Jae D. Chang
Additional contact information
Mohammed J. Alshayeb: School of Architecture & Design, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
Jae D. Chang: School of Architecture & Design, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: The total worldwide photovoltaic (PV) capacity has been growing from about 1 GW at the beginning of the twenty-first century to over 300 GW in 2016 and is expected to reach 740 GW by 2022. PV panel efficiency is reported by PV manufacturers based on laboratory testing under Standard Testing Condition with a specific temperature of 25 °C and solar irradiation of 1000 W/m 2 . This research investigated the thermal interactions between the building roof surface and PV panels by examining the differences in PV panel temperature and energy output for those installed over a green roof (PV-Green) and those installed over a black roof (PV-Black). A year-long experimental study was conducted over the roof of an educational building with roof mounted PV panels with a system capacity of 4.3 kW to measure PV underside surface temperature (PV-UST), ambient air temperature between PV panel and building roof (PV-AT), and PV energy production (PV-EP). The results show that during the summer the PV-Green consistently recorded lower PV-UST and PV-AT temperatures and more PV-EP than PV-Black. The average hourly PV-EP difference was about 0.045 kWh while the maximum PV-EP difference was about 0.075 kWh, which represents roughly a 3.3% and 5.3% increase in PV-EP. For the entire study period, EP-Green produced 19.4 kWh more energy, which represents 1.4% more than EP-Black.

Keywords: PV energy performance; PV thermal performance; thermal interaction; conventional roof membrane; vegetated/green roof; Renewable Energy (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: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/5/1110/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/5/1110/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:11:y:2018:i:5:p:1110-:d:144063

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().