- Author
- Fanney, A. H. | Dougherty, B. P. | Davis, M. W.
- Title
- Performance and Characterization of Building Integrated Photovoltaic Panels.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Book or Conf
- IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 21st. Proceedings. May 20-24, 2002, New Orleans, LA, 1-4 p., 2002
- Keywords
- building integrated | mono-crystalline | photovoltaic | polycrystalline | silicon film
- Abstract
- Buildings consume more than two-thirds of the electricity in the United States. The incorporation of photovoltaics into buildings, referred to as building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), offers an aesthetically pleasing means of displacing centrally located utility generated power with distributed renewable energy. Building integrated photovoltaics replace conventional building elements such as roof tiles, asphalt shingles, facade elements, and shading devices with photovoltaic modules that perform the same functions but also provide electrical power. A barrier to the BIPV implementation is the lack of validated predictive tools to quantify the achievable energy savings. Building owners, architects, and designers need these predictive tools in order to make informed decisions about the economic viability of a proposed BIPV project. The Building and Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is providing high quality experimental data for the development, validation, and improvement of computer simulation tools.