How Much Energy Can a House Covered With Perovskite Generate?
Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) refer to architectural concepts or existing buildings in which the building envelope has the additional functionality of producing electricity. This dual functionality provides an opportunity to offset initial investment, by reducing material and labour expenses in comparison to traditional PV solutions where solar modules don’t replace building elements.
We performed a case study on the BIPV application of Saule perovskite solar cells. We’ve calculated the energy output obtained from a solar photovoltaic system consisting of perovskite-based solar modules implemented onto a 92,8 square meters single-family house located near the city of Poznań, Poland.
We took several factors into account:
- photovoltaic array areas and their tilt angles,
- geographic coordinates and corresponding solar radiation,
- conversion efficiencies of perovskite photovoltaic modules and the effect of temperature.
Calculations on energy outputs obtained from a perovskite photovoltaic system for both the roof, external walls and windows had been carried out on a monthly and yearly basis.
The nominal power generation was estimated by calculating the solar-to-electricity conversion of ink-jet printed, opaque perovskite solar cells (active area: 1 m2, PCE: 12%, AVT: 0% ) on the roof and the walls, and semi-transparent perovskite solar cells (active area: 1 m2, PCE: 6%, AVT: 30%), based on the insolation intensity extracted from the meteorological years datasets.
Based on the total insolation, and the house geometries, the electrical power output of the perovskite solar modules mounted on the roof, façades and windows were simulated.
The results highlight that due to the incorporation of perovskite solar cell technology, the subject single-family house can be identified with a functional and an aesthetical monolithic building integrated photovoltaic system.
The construction in Poznań turned out to be on the top of the buildings energy ‘evolution’ under the name of ‘plus energy building’ (PEB) which is able to generate a surplus in the annual energy balance.
The yearly energy output to be provided by the east-west oriented roof only has been calculated to 12377,95 kWh. This is more than the average annual electric power consumption of a subject four-person household.
If we also take into consideration all the areas possible to be covered with perovskite solar modules like walls (26816,48 kWh) and windows (2064,15 kWh), the yearly total energy output 41258,58 kWh.This means that perovskite solar cells do not only provide the complete energy demand of a single house, but they are able to support the power requirements of three other homes.
The described simulation has been a subject of maters thesis of Katarzyna Formela. She examined the implementation of perovskite solar cells in architecture and civil engineering. The goal of the research was to analyze the efficiency and costs of energy production associated with building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) consisting of perovskite solar cells in a real residential building located in Poznan, Poland. The thesis has been conducted under the supervision of prof. PUT, dr hab. Jerzy Pasławski from Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Poznan University of Technology.
