The impact of using semi-transparent photovoltaic in office building facades on improving indoor thermal performance in Egypt

Abstract EN

This research dealt with semi-transparent photovoltaic STPV as a substitution material of the
transparent parts of office building envelope.

Integrating STPV in facades especially in the
transparent parts plays a major role in improving the thermal performance due to its impact on
reducing the amount of solar heat gain thus reducing cooling loads in addition to not having any
negative consequences on the environment.

As a result, it is trigger for STPV to be integrated in
office building facades especially that in these buildings 51-59% of total energy consumption is
for achieving the visual and thermal comfort [1].

This is due to the extensive depending on
utilization of mechanical methods in achieving the indoor thermal comfort.

As a result of the over
consumption of energy in achieving the thermal comfort, the situation of energy crisis that Egypt
is facing nowadays became more worse in addition to increasing the level of pollution and carbon
emissions.

This paper assesses the thermal performance of STPV integrated in office building facades
through simulation conducted with Design builder software.

The thermal performance of STPV
is evaluated by investigating the efficient design of STPV through different parameters.

These
parameters are window to wall ratio WWR and visible light transmittance VLT, with taking into
account the impact of using lighting control system.

It is obtained, as a result of this study, that
integrating STPV in office building facades could save almost half of cooling loads regardless of
the difference in climatic conditions over the investigated three climatic regions in Egypt.