Design of a Ventilated Façade Integrating a Luminescent Solar Concentrator Photovoltaic Panel

Abstract

The increasing trend towards decarbonization requires the reduction of the environmental impact of the building sector that currently accounts for approximately 40% of the total CO2 emissions of European countries. Even though Luminescent Solar Concentrator (LSC) panels could be a very promising technology to be installed in urban environments, there is still little implementation of LSC panels in building façades. Here, the realization of a Ventilated Façade (VF) integrating an LSC device as an external pane is presented and a preliminary numerical and experimental investigation is used to evaluate the interaction between the different structure components. Thanks to the realization of a dedicated mock-up finite element method, models are calibrated and validated against experimental measurements, showing a good correspondence between simulated and measured data. Moreover, the electrical characterization of the LSC panel confirms that large area devices can be used as an external skin of VF, reporting a photovoltaic efficiency of 0.5%. The system’s thermal and optical properties (estimated thanks to the software COMSOL Multiphysics) encourage the continuation of the research by considering different technologies for the VF internal skin, by scaling up the case study, and by running the simulation of an entire building considering winter and summer energy demands.

Design of a Color Neutral Nonpatterned Photovoltaic Window Based on Luminescent Solar Concentrator

“…[66,67] The autonomous operation of this kind of devices not only increases the building indoor comfort, but they considerably decrease the building energy demand. [14] Moreover, the optical characterizations suggest that the obtained onsite PCE (≃0.23%) could be incremented up to ≃0.5% [46] by preserving the same single-slab structure but acting on the approach used to achieve the indoor neutral color.…”

“…[17] LSC panels having dimensions suitable for building integration are usually colored panels functionalized with organic dyes, [42] often designed for greenhouses, [43] or outdoor applications. [44][45][46] A first step in the realization of an optically balanced large-area LSC panel based on organic dyes was made by Eni that has patented a device composed by three active slabs having complementary colors, so to realize LSCs of neutral coloration. [47] The aim of this work is to investigate a different approach for the realization of large-area color neutral devices.…”

Review of Façade Photovoltaic Solutions for Less Energy-Hungry Buildings

“…Optical concentrators commonly used in PVT systems can be broadly classified into two main families, namely, conventional and holographic concentrators [87]. These two families can be further subdivided into different types, such as refractive, reflective, hybrid, and luminescent concentrators [88], which can be in turn subdivided into compound parabolic concentrators (CPCs), V-trough reflectors, Fresnel reflectors (FR), or luminescent solar concentrators (LSC) [89][90][91].…”