A Roadmap for the Integration of Active Solar Systems into Buildings

Constantinos Vassiliades,Aimilios Michael,Andreas Savvides,Soteris Kalogirou

doi:10.3390/app9122462

Constantinos Vassiliades, Aimilios Michael + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/app9122462

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Abstract

This paper aims to simplify the interdisciplinary design process that will be used as a design tool for the viable integration of active solar energy systems into buildings, i.e., Building-Integrated Solar Thermal Systems—BISTSs; Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Systems—BIPVSs, through the creation of a roadmap. The research also aims supplement the work of researchers who have dealt with the creation of design tools that aim to optimise a specific aspect of a building design, or their geometric forms, in order to shape energy-efficient and sustainable architectural solutions. More specifically, a prescriptive design strategy is derived from the proposed design tool. This is based on five design steps, each of which is analysed and which lead to the creation of a comprehensive design tool for siting buildings so as to optimise the integration of solar systems. The originality of this tool is based on the fact that it makes an important step in the standardisation of these studies.

Highlights

The first oil crisis in the early 1970s forced the building industry to a sudden awakening, and the development of a concentrated effort, in order to reduce building energy needs, that focused initially on the active systems of the building, with the passive approach to the subject following in the mid-1970s [1]
Considering the above, it became clear that the use and exploitation of renewable energy sources, especially solar energy, during architectural planning is one of the most important parameters a building needs to meet in order to be considered viable
The key key findings findings that that summarise summarise the the main main points points and and limitations limitations of of the the previous previous works works may may be be enumerated enumerated as as follows: follows:

Summary

Introduction

The first oil crisis in the early 1970s forced the building industry to a sudden awakening, and the development of a concentrated effort, in order to reduce building energy needs, that focused initially on the active systems of the building, with the passive approach to the subject following in the mid-1970s [1]. It is interesting, that the reckless use of fossil fuels for energy production that led to the aforementioned environmental problems and oil crisis took place while Europe’s average Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) was about 1200 kWh/m2 /year [2].

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