Recent Advancements of Semi-Transparent Photovoltaic Technologies for Innovative BIPV Products

In 2022, buildings accounted for about 37% of CO2 emissions. In order to meet the Paris Agreement requirements within the 2030, reducing CO2 emissions in the building sector is mandatory. By using building envelopes with adequate insulation and transparency to let natural light and solar heat gain into the indoor environment, heating, cooling, and artificial light consumption and CO2 emissions related may be reduced. Since BIPV systems are part of the building envelope, advancements in their application can provide technical, technological, and financial answers to environmental problems. Moreover, BIPV systems also have an aesthetic impact on the formal characterization of building envelope. Latest development in 3D glass components coupled with emerging photovoltaic technology is shown in this paper. This work shows the results of the simulations (in terms of thermal transmittance, solar heat gain coefficient, and visual transmittance) carried out on 3D glass elements integrated with Luminescent Solar Concentrators (LSC) and Semi-Transparent Perovskite Solar Cells (STPSC). In accordance with EN 50583 Photovoltaics in Buildings simulations have been carried out for understanding the performance behaviour of these innovative BIPV components for translucent façades. 20 hypotheses -including Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC), already analysed in previous research activities -, LSC devices, and STPSC, were analysed during the ongoing research and are synthesized in this paper. Visible transmittance (VT) results are interesting since this increase the aesthetic potential of 3D glass components compared with opaque BIPV technology that are more widely used, and furthermore the effect of the novel product into the indoor comfort is remarkable, meanwhile thermal parameters did not report significant variations in comparison with previous tested hypotheses.