BIPV

A team of scientists in the United States have designed a transparent organic photovoltaic material for solar window applications in commercial buildings.

A team of Australian scientists has declared the prospect of buildings, particularly those with glass facades, becoming close to self-powering is a step closer to realisation after developing a 15.5% efficient semi-transparent solar cell which allows more than 20% of visible light through.

Buildings-integrated photovoltaics maker Mitrex plans to deploy highway noise barriers with integrated solar that have 1.2 MW of capacity per kilometer. The technology is currently in the pilot phase at government entity locations in North America.

Melbourne’s City of Boroondara council has ordered a homeowner to remove rooftop solar panels on a street-facing facade due to the building’s position in a heritage overlay. In 2021 the City of Boroondara declared a climate emergency and called for a tripling of rooftop solar in the municipality. The homeowner described the decision as “ridiculous.”

With architects and construction companies across the world showing an increasing interest in building integrated PV, one Australian company has outlined plans to clad an eight-storey building being constructed in West Melbourne with a “solar skin” that will generate almost all of the building’s base power.

Scientists in Australia have developed an optimisation framework for building-integrated photovoltaics that allows the selection of design variables according to user preferences. Their model considers PV-related features such as tilt angle, window-to-wall ratio (WWR), PV placement, and PV product type, as well as objective functions and constraints such as the net present value and the payback period.

The Sun Rock building is owned by Taiwan’s power utility Taipower. It was covered with 4,000 square meters of PV panels deployed by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV.

Deployment in the building integrated PV segment is accelerating, and so too are the number of solar products available to architects and developers. And while BIPV had long been the segment in which an array of thin-film technologies could shine, they are now in increasingly stiff competition with crystalline silicon rivals.

Australian property investor and developer Cbus Property has revealed plans to clad a $1 billion commercial office tower being developed in Melbourne’s CBD with a ‘solar skin’ capable of generating 20% of the project’s base building electricity requirements.

Buildings in the City of Melbourne could provide 74% of their own electricity needs if solar technology is fully integrated into roofs, walls and windows, new research from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science has found.