Impact of building integrated photovoltaic-phase change material panels on building energy efficiency improvement: a case study

ABSTRACT

Integrating phase change material with building envelopes is recently considered one of the most reliable passive solutions to mitigate indoor temperature fluctuations, improving therefore indoor comfort. In addition, the integration of photovoltaics to combat the gradual increase in energy consumption is highly increasing to meet the growing demand for energy. Using phase change material to improve thermal and electrical performances of building integrated photovoltaic systems and to reduce incoming heat energy indoors, simultaneously, were performed. Interestingly, it is highly recommended to integrate the building integrated photovoltaic phase change material systems on inclined roofs in order to perform the phase change material as preferred through a cyclic process. The peak temperature of the inclined and vertical building integrated photovoltaic systems decreased from 70.5°C and 41°C to 41.4°C and 31°C, respectively. Hence, a drop in average indoor daytime temperature where the peak indoor temperature has been reduced to about 4.5°C. The inclined and vertical building integrated photovoltaic systems’ DC power output, at midday, has been increased from 74.5 W to 108.5 W and 37.5 W to 38.5 W. Eventually, the use of phase change material decreased the thermal load leveling by 7%, 2% and 1.5% during the first three days, respectively, After the third day, the decrease of the thermal load leveling remained constant at 3%. Consequently, findings reveal that using phase change material could be an excellent solution to decrease indoor air temperature fluctuation and can bring higher temperature drops.

KEYWORDS:

• Building efficiency
• thermal comfort
• nearly zero energy building
• phase change material
• BIPV-PCM

Nomenclature

Table

Highlights

1. The indoor air temperature variation remained cyclic from the third day.

2. Inclined BIPV-PCM systems are highly recommended to perform a cyclic process.

3. The use of PCM decreases the indoor air temperature fluctuation during the studied period.

Authors contributions

Meriem NOUIRA: Dr. engineer and contract assistant professor: Optimizing, analyzing, reviewing, investigation, validation, writing, interpreting, editing and performing all the findings and results. Analyzing the numerical results using the presented Methodology and Software.

Habib SAMMOUDA: Professor: review.

Neda AZIMI: Assistant Professor: review.

Disclosure statement

The presented research is a continuity of a research conference paper mentioned below and some data are taken from the following paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9624915

Additional information

Funding

This work did not receive funding from any source.