Thermal Assessment of the Varennes Library Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Rooftop System

The lack of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) standards and design guidelines for architects and engineers in Canada is one of the barriers to the market uptake of this technology. This study provides key design considerations of a BIPV roof under two different configurations: naturally ventilated and with thermal energy heat recovery (BIPVT). An existing method to estimate the array temperature of infrared (IR) images was first validated. Then, the performance of King’s model to estimate the temperature of the naturally ventilated configuration was evaluated and found to provide a good estimate of the actual temperature measurements. Finally, maximum temperatures of 65 °C were observed, showing that the naturally ventilated BIPV design is sufficient to maintain BIPV temperatures below the maximum rating limit of 85 °C.