Experimental and numerical studies on the thermal and electrical performance of a CdTe ventilated window integrated with vacuum glazing

Abstract

The application of PV double skin ventilated windows (PV-DSV) can reduce intense sunlight from entering room and meantime lower the cell temperature. Vacuum glazing is superior in thermal insulation. To further strengthen the thermal insulation of the PV-DSV, this paper proposes an integrated vacuum glazing with PV double-skin ventilated window (VPV-DSV), which employs the CdTe PV glazing and the vacuum glazing as the front and back glazings. Thermal and electrical performance of the VPV-DSV was investigated and compared with the PV vacuum insulating glazing unit (VPV-IGU) through experiment and simulation. Comparison of PV-DSV with different types of back glazing was made to explore the influence of back glazing types in PV-DSV. Furthermore, influence of the window design factors was explored. Results indicated that the use of vacuum glazing improved the thermal insulation of PV-DSV and resulted in 59.8% reduction of the U-value. VPV-DSV reduced more cooling load, but VPV-IGU outperformed VPV-DSV in thermal insulation. Owing to a small temperature coefficient of the CdTe cell, their power output was similar. In addition, the WWR and PV coverage had more obvious impacts on the performance of VPV-DSV than the emissivity of low-e coating.