Experimental Work to Investigate the Effect of Rooftop PV Panel Shading on Building Thermal Performance

Saad Odeh () and Luke Pearling
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Saad Odeh: Sydney Institute of Business and Technology, Western Sydney University, Sydney City Campus, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Luke Pearling: Mechanical Engineering, WSU Sydney City Campus, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 13, 1-13

Abstract: Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) panel systems have become a key component in green building design, driven by new building sustainability measures advocated worldwide. The shading generated by the rooftop PV panel arrays can impact their annual heating and cooling load, as well as their overall thermal performance. This paper presents a long-term experimental investigation into the changes in roof temperature caused by PV panels. The experiment was conducted over the course of a year, with measurements taken on four sample days each month. The study is based on measurements of the covered roof temperature, the uncovered roof temperature, PV surface temperature, ambient air temperature, as well as solar irradiation, wind speed, and rainfall. The results reveal that the annual energy savings (MJ/m 2 ) in the cooling load due to the covered roof are about 26% higher than the energy loss from the heating load due to shading. The study shows that the effect of the rooftop PV panels on the house’s total heating and cooling load savings is between 5.3 to 6.1%. This difference is significant in thermal performance analyses, especially if most of the roof is covered by PV panels.

Keywords: rooftop PV shading; thermal performance; heating and cooling load (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: 2025
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