Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)
While traditional solar panels usually don’t provide any actual structural function to the buildings they’re installed on, BiPV does. At its core, BiPV is a category of dual-purpose solar products. Building-integrated photovoltaics both generate solar electricity and work as a structural part of a building.
Today, most BiPV products are designed for large commercial buildings, like an apartment complex or community center, however, there’s a growing demand for residential homes that wish to retain their aesthetics.
the Advantages
The benefits of BiPV is that it’s another way to generate free energy from the sun. Enough solar energy is continually hitting Earth to power our entire planet 10,000x over, so every extra inch of that surface we can use to generate electricity is a plus.
Aside from solar production, the aesthetics of BiPV are a big draw. While some people dislike the noticeable look of solar panels on top of their roof, BiPV offers subtler, sleeker way for solar. For commercial and industrial buildings, BiPV showcases a company’s innovation and environmental awareness.
solar Roofing
Probably the most talked-about type of BIPV technology is solar roofing. Also known as solar shingles or solar tiles, this is an alternative to traditional rooftop solar panels. Instead of placing panels on top of your existing roof, you can replace your roof shingles or tiles with a dual-purpose photovoltaic roofing material that both provides shelter and generates electricity. One of the added benefits is that due to the design and material used, they don’t have the issue of collecting so much dirt as traditional panels.
solar cladding
Curtain wall products are generally BIPV façade modules that balance daylighting, and shading occurrences. A curtain wall can achieve all the building envelope requirements such as thermal and noise insulations, weather-proofing as well as load-bearing. It also adds to the thermal and visual comfort of the building. Rain screen façade (cold façade) also comes under this category where the air gap between the cladding and the sub-frame facilitates cooling effect and thereby improving the efficiency of the module.
solar glaze
The sun hits more building surfaces than a roof, so why not take advantage of that space? While solar irradiance depends on geography, one or more sides of a building often have decent sun exposure. Solar windows (or solar glass) are a category of BIPV products that rely on solar glaze, ultra-thin solar cells that capture sunlight while also maintaining transparency, like an ordinary window.
solar agriculture
One of the global concerns for solar, has been the potential farmland used for energy, as you require 2-acres of solar to produce 1Mgw of power.With BiPV Solar, you can now raise the solar panels off the ground and at the same time protect the crops from harmful UV’s. Lightweight flexible panels can also be attached to existing greenhouses to provide both power and protection.
General Building Elements
General building elements can include solar awnings, building facades, or really anything structural about a building’s side that can be solar-ified. More often than rooftop solar installations, these types of solar-integrated building elements experiment with using lightweight thin-film solar panels or organic solar cells.
Covered walkways, bus stops and carpark are also great locations to utilize the opportunity to use BiPV technology.
products & solutions
BiPVKorea offer a full suite of solutions that cover all that is BiPV Solar Technology. From roofing, cladding, walkways & glass canopy's, to industrial agricultural photovoltaic panels.
The nature of the solution we offer requires every project to be customized to the client's requirements, as no two projects will be the same.