Abstract
Despite the steady growth of grid-connected installed capacity in Singapore in the last decade and intensive government effort towards “solarization”, implementation of photovoltaics (PV) and especially building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) into the built environment has not gathered as much momentum as would have been expected given the country’s ample solar energy resource potential, strong economic fundamentals and the robust real estate sector. Based on a conducted web-survey and qualitative interviews among local professionals, this paper examines the obstacles, potentials and drivers that could facilitate and accelerate BIPV and PV façade integration, as well as needs that could encourage wider PV use. In order to define a unified strategy, aligning the stakeholders’ views, the following disputable factors are pointed out and discussed: (1) incomplete understanding of BIPV and building-applied photovoltaics (BAPV) among stakeholders, (2) costs of BIPV systems, (3) low awareness of and confidence in “integrability” of PV modules, (4) incomplete knowledge about and insufficiently investigated PV performance and (5) potential of PV façade and roof integration. Since the costs are the key identified factor for BIPV implementation, life-cycle cost (LCC) assessments of PV façade and roof integrations have been performed, which supported the search for solutions to identified problems. The performed analysis and findings present the basis for the development of a long-term holistic strategy for PV implementation in Singapore that could help the highly-urbanized, tropical resource- and land-constrained island city-state reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and achieve the climate change targets, thus promoting a more sustainable built environment.
Highlights
Grid-connected installed capacity in Singapore has recorded a steady growth from10.1 MWp in 2012 to 350 MWp in the first quarter of 2020 [1,2]
Over 90% of PV in buildings are building-applied photovoltaics (BAPV): installations fastened with clipping elements onto roof metal sheets or assembled with metal ballasted structures onto concrete-base rooftops
The results related to both east-north and east-west designs, shown in Tables A1–A4 in Appendix A, indicate that it is not easy to make the application of BAPV façade systems on existing buildings economically efficient in case no refurbishment cost replacement is assumed
Summary
Grid-connected installed capacity in Singapore has recorded a steady growth from. 10.1 MWp in 2012 to 350 MWp in the first quarter of 2020 [1,2]. PV generation capacity accounts for only around 2% of the total installed generation capacity [1], while PV generated energy represents less than 1% of the total energy generation mix. Over 90% of PV in buildings are building-applied photovoltaics (BAPV): installations fastened with clipping elements onto roof metal sheets or assembled with metal ballasted structures onto concrete-base rooftops. The remaining PV systems are sloped-roof residential applications, scattered small ground-mounts and sporadic BIPV within which are few PV façade integrations. Floating PV systems on reservoirs have recently been launched to target Singapore’s space constraints [3].
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