Energy Saving Evaluation of the Ventilated BIPV Walls

This study integrates photovoltaic (PV) system, building structure, and heat flow mechanism to propose the notion of ventilated Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) walls. The energy-saving potential of the ventilated BIPV walls was investigated via engineering considerations and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The results show that the heat removal rate and indoor heat gain of the proposed ventilated BIPV walls were dominantly affected by outdoor wind velocity and airflow channel width. Correlations for predicting the heat removal rate and indoor heat gain, the reduction ratio of the indoor heat gain, CO2 reduction, and induced indoor air exchange are introduced