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9 December 2017

24 Pages

A Review on Building Integrated Photovoltaic Façade Customization Potentials

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Department of Architectural Engineering, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain 15551, UAE
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Sustainability2017, 9(12), 2287;https://doi.org/10.3390/su9122287
This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation - ZEMCH 2016
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Abstract

Technological advancement in Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) has converted the building façade into a renewable energy-based generator. The BIPV façade is designed to provide energy generation along with conventional design objectives such as aesthetics and environmental control. The challenge however, is that architectural design objectives sometimes conflict with energy performance, such as the provision of view and daylight versus maximum power output. In innovative cases, the characteristics of conventional BIPV façades have been modified by researchers to address such conflicts through customization as an emerging trend in BIPV façade design. Although extensive reviews exist on BIPV product types, design integration, adoption barriers and performance issues, research on BIPV customization has not been reviewed as a solution to BIPV adoption. This paper seeks to review the potential of BIPV façade customization as a means of enhancing BIPV adoption. The current paper identifies customization parameters ranging from the customization category, level, and strategies, and related architectural potential along with an assessment of their impact. The findings reflect that elemental and compositional level customization using combined customization strategies provide enhanced BIPV products. These products are well integrated for both energy generation and aesthetic applications with a power output increase of up to 80% in some cases. The paper concludes that a wide range of BIPV adoption barriers such as aesthetics, architectural integration, and performance can be overcome by appropriate BIPV customization.

1. Introduction

Buildings are a main source of global energy consumption and CO2 emissions; accounting for about 40% of global energy consumption [1,2] The international contribution to sustainability has generated a large number of publications in relevant journals and conferences over the last four decades [3] and has established a dire need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [4,5,6] as these gases are potential causes of threats to the ecosystem such as global warming [7,8,9,10]. From the Kyoto protocol of 1997 to the Paris Agreement of 2015, various policy directions have been motivated to mitigate international environmental pollution. Mitigation in various dimensions is a key factor to improving the environment for future generations [11,12]. At the building scale, the potential of on-site renewable energy generation to optimize energy demand and supply infrastructure has been investigated [13,14,15]. This provides an opportunity to address environmental pollution; which has frequently been linked with the rising level of nonrenewable energy consumption [5]. Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) provides such an opportunity through clean micro-energy generation being adoptable to various building designs. Several studies indicate that application of BIPV leads to substantial energy savings [16,17,18] and thus related gains in energy consumption and reduction of pollution sources. BIPV reduces the damage done to the ecosystem through conventional energy sources [19] and is a promising way of relieving the increasing financial and environmental costs of fossil fuel energy generation [20]. Technological advancements have evolved BIPV into a PV application with the capability of electrical delivery at a comparatively lower cost than grid electricity for certain end users in certain peak demand niche markets [21]. As a contemporary material available to architects, BIPV serves simultaneously as a part of the building envelope and an energy source. BIPV systems can be more cost effective simply because their composition and location replaces a number of conventional components and thus provide multiple gains which are reviewed in details in this paper. These include savings in materials and electricity costs, reduced use of fossil fuels, decreasing carbon and greenhouse gases emissions and improved architectural image of the building [22,23].
However, several studies highlight various barriers which are limitations to the widespread adoption of BIPV [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34]. They range from general product issues such as performance, aesthetics and technical complexity [26] to specific regional issues such as the need for extensive education on professional and public levels [24,25,27]. Greater attention to research and development in customization and BIPV product designs with good architectural aesthetics and integrality have been suggested by reviewers as potential solutions to these [25,26,28,32]. However, our survey of recent BIPV reviews over the last 5 years (Table 1) shows that there is only limited information on customization as potential driver for BIPV adoption. Only partial attention has been made of custom BIPV; relating to mention of strategies [35,36] and cost limitations [37]. In two other cases [38,39] a descriptive inventory of several market-ready custom BIPV product applications connecting cell technology and architectural integration is given [38]. Also, details on the possibilities, market options, and aesthetic levels of customizability were presented [39].
Table 1. Summary of customization content in recent Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) reviews.
Furthermore, no information or review of experimental investigations on customization is presented to theorize its description or justify its potentiality. This review paper aims to fill this gap as identified in the literature by investigating the characteristics, strategies and potentials of BIPV customization. In addition, the study seeks to showcase the opportunities provided by customization to address the barriers of conventional BIPV.

1.1. BIPV Customisation: Working Definition

Customization is, “the action of modifying something to suit a particular individual or task” [49]. It can also be described as the configuration of products and services to meet customers’ individual needs [50]. These definitions suggest that customization is directly associated with the identification of a function, need or objective. As it relates to BIPV, several customization objectives have been investigated, such as aesthetics [51,52], architectural integration [53,54], thermal management [55,56,57], and shading [15,41,53]. These objectives consequently determine the added function of the designed custom BIPV façade along with energy production from the solar cells. Ref. [39,58] suggest that BIPV designs can follow a systematic design process. This infers that various levels/stages of customization are identifiable; [39] suggests a cell, module, and façade level activity while [58] presents an elemental, compositional, and integrational level of interest. In both representative cases, the idea is to first customize the cell, then the module, and finally the façade.

1.2. Research Design

The present review is divided into three main sections; first an overview on BIPV façades, then an appraisal of standard BIPV barriers, and finally a review of BIPV façade customization studies. Data collection and analysis steps of relevant studies for all sections of this paper were limited to English-language studies found in the ScienceDirect and Google Scholar database. In Section 1, an assessment of the mention given to BIPV customization in previous state-of-the art reviews was presented to validate the need for this investigation. For Section 2, we identified eleven (11) studies within the past five years which focused primarily on a review of barriers inherent to BIPV in general, BIPV products or to BIPV adoption. The selection was limited to the last five years, as BIPV is an evolving technology and this review seeks to identify current mitigating issues. These studies collectively represent the views of several researchers drawn from surveys involving close to 1000 respondents, based on experiences and findings from professionals and researchers worldwide. In Section 3, keywords such as “BIPV customization”, “custom BIPV”, “customized BIPV” were used in our search, but at the time of writing this review, no studies with these exact words were found. We expanded our search for related titles on BIPV façade customization and identified 25 representative studies with related abstracts and thus focused our investigation on these. Figure 1 shows a color-coded mind map for this investigation; it reflects the research direction and connections, as well as a basis for deductive reasoning which informs the resulting conclusions made in this review. The blue-coded section groups together the research on BIPV types and potential benefits which are discussed in detail later in Section 2 (Overview on BIPV façades). The red coded section combines the barriers that affect BIPV adoption into the built environment later discussed separately in Section 3 (BIPV barriers). The green coded sections put together the specifics of customization as an approach to enhance BIPV adoption into built environment later discussed in Section 4.1 and Section 4.2 (BIPV customization investigations). The detailed discussions on the specific findings of the mind map are discussed in the following Section 2, Section 3 and Section 4.
Figure 1. BIPV façade customization review mind map. Source: authors.

2. Overview on BIPV Façade Applications

The building façade is conventionally made up of walls, glazing, cladding and fenestrations; and other structures like shading devices, parapets and balconies. Each of these building components provide opportunities for integrating PVs to the building and by extension, for façade customization [36,37,59,60,61,62]. The main BIPV façade applications extracted from literature [39,43,59,61,63] include curtain walls, glazing, external/shading devices, and innovative applications. Table 2 presents an overview of these applications using representative built examples to describe the advantages and disadvantages of each of these types.
Table 2. Design impact of BIPV façade types. Source: authors.

Strategic Benefits of BIPV

BIPV is a multifunctional technology and they are therefore usually designed to serve more than one function [36,60,65]. Along with the fundamental function of producing of electricity, the multi-functionality of BIPV thus implies that it can fulfill several other tasks as a façade element such as solar protection and glare protection. Three identified classes of such added function or benefits from literature relate to the building envelope design, economic advantages and environmental impact.
  • Design Benefits: relating to architectural integration and function of BIPV as a building component
  • Economic Benefits: relating to financial advantages accrued as a result of BIPV application
  • Environmental Benefits: relating to micro or macro environment improvements due to BIPV application
The list below contains a categorization of the multiple functions that BIPV modules can perform based on its unique characteristics.
  • Design-related benefits
    • View and daylighting—semi-transparent options allow for light transmission and contact with exterior [61,66,67].
    • Aesthetic quality—integration in buildings as a design element [36,61]
    • Sun protection/shadowing/shading modulation—used as fixed or tracking shading devices [36,37,60,61,67],
    • Replacement of conventional materials such as brickwork [37].
    • Public demonstration of owner’s green ecological and future-oriented image [61].
    • Safety—applied as safety glass [61].
    • Noise protection—reaching up to 25 dB sound dumping [36,37,61,67].
    • Heat protection/Thermal insulation (heating as well as cooling)—improving the efficiency of cells by cooling through rear ventilation [36,37,61]
    • Visual cover/refraction—one-way mirroring visual cover [60,61].
  • Economic Benefits
    • Removal of the need for the transmittance of electricity over long distances from power generation stations [68,69].
    • Reduction in capital expenditure for infrastructure and maintenance [68,69].
    • Reduction in land use for the generation of electricity [28,70].
    • Material and labour savings as well as electrical cost reductions [36].
    • Reduction in additional assembly and mounting costs, leading to on-site electricity and lowering of total building material costs and significant savings [45]. In addition, ongoing costs of a building are reduced via operational cost savings and reduced embodied energy [71].
    • Combined with grid connection, FITs; cost savings equivalent to the rate the electricity is close to zero [28,46,72]
  • Environmental Benefits
    • Reduction of carbon emissions [28]
    • The pollution-free benefit of solar energy [45].
    • Reduces the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) relating to the health of the public and the environment [28].

3. BIPV Façade Applications: Barriers and Strategies

Notwithstanding the stated multi-functionality of BIPV already expressed in several studies, its adoption is globally challenged by certain barriers. It has been argued that sustainability goals of the future can only be achieved if we look beyond new technologies themselves, and account for the complex human factors influencing their adoption and use [73]. Several researchers have investigated these barriers and their studies show that there are various perspectives and issues of concern. These include challenges in the various stages of application [30] such as the design stage and installation stage, and in some regional cases, expertise limitation, lack of promotion, and financial issues [27]. There are also key barriers that are general to BIPV adoption, and in some cases, affect the building integration of other renewable energy technologies. Some of these general issues from a more holistic point of view are sociotechnical, management, economic, and policy-related [29] as well as knowledge and information-related [26]. Others include insufficient presentation of BIPV product and project databases, lack of adequate business models, and insufficient dissemination of BIPV information [24].
In almost all of these studies, strategies for overcoming these barriers have been proposed. These strategies are drivers in various forms with the potential to advance or facilitate the BIPV implementation in the built environment. In some cases, they are proposed solutions to counter one or more barriers when fully applied. Table 3 gives a detailed overview of the findings of these related studies showing a categorization of the barriers and drivers identified to BIPV application; to clearly identify the issues of concern and potential solutions.
Table 3. A detailed overview of identified BIPV barriers and drivers. Source: By Authors.
The collective information from these 11 studies represents the opinions of close to 1000 international respondents. The summary of these findings was distilled and diagrammatically presented in a force field analysis (Figure 2) for further scrutiny. A force field analysis is a management analytical tool used to conceptualize the forces interacting to promote and oppose change in a given situation [34]. We have applied it to give a visual representation of the barriers, stated as restraining factors and drivers as facilitating factors. Kurt Lewin is often acknowledged as the first to propose this technique in 1951 [74]. The weight of the arrows in this adaptation is shown in percentages, and obtained from the frequency of mention in studies of a barrier or solution.
Figure 2. Simplified force field analysis of barriers and drivers of BIPV adoption. Source: By Authors.

Force Field Analysis: Comparison of Barriers and Strategies

Statistically speaking, six classes of barriers relating to the product, education, economy, and industry were identified in the referred literature with further sub-division of three of these classes. As an example, the product efficiency and design class encompasses related barriers such as system performance, design standards, codes and regulations. It also includes design tools and software, aesthetics and architectural integration issues. As observed from our investigation, the need to address public awareness and perception [24,25,26,27,28,29,32,33,34] and the insufficient professional training and expertise [24,25,26,27,29,30,32,33,34] are the most frequently identified barriers to BIPV adoption. This suggests an international agreement that the need for proper education regarding the potentials of BIPV is lacking in both public and professional domains. Comparatively, insufficient product and project demonstration and database, as well as insufficient international or bank support are ranked as the least identified barriers. It may be assumed therefore that client motivation via these latter support schemes may not be directly related to the reluctance to BIPV adoption. Another deduction from this survey is that comparatively, there are potentially more product efficiency and design related barriers, although education issues are deemed more crucial. It may be thus deduced that increase in education, training and expertise can be a tool to address issues with performance.
The analysis shows the combined weight of barriers is 400% (normalized to 40) and the combined weight of the drivers is 300% (normalized to 30). By increasing attention to the drivers, via increased research and development, raising each to a 100%, the combined weight of the drivers will rise to 400% (normalized to 40)—assuming the barriers stay constant. In this scenario, the drivers will effectively cancel out the barriers.
With particular mention to the strategies proposed, our goal was to identify if there was sufficient information to suggest BIPV customization was a potential driver for BIPV adoption. To this end, the need for education related to design integration such as BIPV variety relating to technological choice, aesthetics, color, shape and size has been identified [25]. Improvements in product design with appeal to architects was mentioned as a potential solution; relating specifically to aesthetics [25,26,32,33], directly to customization and variety [25,26], and architectural integration [25,26,28] and innovation [30]. Thus, customization driven by variety, aesthetics and architectural integration has been identified as a potential driver of BIPV adoption. This justifies the need to further investigate BIPV customization studies and the validation of their potential to address these barriers as mentioned.

4. BIPV Façade Customization: Critical Review of Investigations

As architects are saddled with the responsibility of building design; it is pertinent to understand fully the opportunities provided by BIPV in order to communicate them effectively to clients [75]. It has been put forward that the success of the BIPV market will in part be determined by the availability of good customizability and convincing aesthetics [39]. It terms of the need, one aspect mentioned by [76] suggests that standardized products are often not applicable when retrofitting demands flexible dimensions, and custom products have better thermal performance than conventional products [77]. Another research posits that aesthetics, dimensional requirements focused on customization capacity and functionality ought to drive the requirements for the BIPV façade [78]. Thus, this calls for innovative approaches with custom-made products as some have huge potential for energy conservation and thermal comfort [79]. Most manufacturers provide custom-made BIPV services, such as the possibility to produce modules of various power output, form, glass serigraphy/printing and colors, as well as to change the cell arrangement and the glass surface (clear glass, prism, enameled) with different properties (i.e., glare reduction) and finishing [39]. This section however, focuses on BIPV façade customization from the perspective of research investigations to identify the potentials of custom BIPV already mentioned in this review. This perspective was chosen to detail the unbiased results of research experimentation without the inhibition of market performance or worthiness.

4.1. Methodological Approach

This section focuses on the details of the investigative analysis of the 25 selected papers on BIPV customization. As earlier stated, the result of the review was used to check the applicability of BIPV façade customization to address the barriers of standard BIPV. Four (4) aspects of review were selected which are Innovation & custom category, Customisation strategy, Architectural function and Research results. These describe various aspects of BIPV façade customization and form the framework for this evaluation. Figure 3 shows these related aspects as a research guide; with further explanation briefly presented following the figure to explain the definitions and state the importance of each aspect of the review.
Figure 3. Research investigation framework. Source: By Authors.
1. Innovation and Custom Category: Product/Integration/Elemental/Compositional
This establishes whether customization is the design of a new product or a developed system of integration. Next, the identification of the customization level with regards to the aspect of the BIPV façade for which parametric variation was investigated. In this regard, several other authors suggest that a sub-division of BIPV exists by its constitution, being the elements that make up the modules and the composition that makes up the façade [35,38,39,58,60].
  • The Elemental Level: this represents the breakdown of a BIPV module into various components i.e., the solar cells, frame, glass and other protective layers; reflecting customization of cell or glass or layer type; colors or efficiencies.
  • The Compositional Level: this represents the composition of the cells of the BIPV module (module-level), relating to cell spacing and the modules of the BIPV façade (façade-level), relating to tilt angle or spacing from wall for example.
2. Customization strategy: Standard/Custom/Module/Façade design manipulation
In each of the studies various strategies have been employed to customize the BIPV façade. This section helps to provide an inventory of various strategies, categorization for further analysis, possible requirements, limitations and challenges, as well as directions for possible improvements.
These groups are;
  • Systematic Parametric Variation (SPV): iterative parametric changes to reach an optimum goal
  • Modification of Conventional Features (MCF): modification of conventional BIPV parts
  • Enhanced Design Modularization (EDM): upgrade of BIPV façade types into unique modules
  • Compositional Modification and Hybridization (CMH): combination of special materials with BIPV
3. Architectural function: energy generation/aesthetics/daylighting/thermal control
This section represents the stated, implied and potential functions of the custom BIPV façade in each study. It informs the specific custom function and provides justification to debate the sustained multi-functional advantage of BIPV. It also indicates if a connection exists between the customization category and level, and the potential architectural function.
4. Results: Power Output/Cell efficiency/Heating or Cooling loads
As the focus of this review is to validate the potential of BIPV customization as a solution to standard BIPV challenges, we also extracted the specific qualitative or quantitative data from the studies as made available. In some cases data on power output of BIPV façade output was provided which was;
  • A comparison with a base case (standard BIPV);
  • Hot climate results as representative of intense scenarios (where multiple climatic data was presented), or
  • Highest output (where optimization based on parametric variation was investigated)
Table 4 details the investigated cases based on the research investigation framework explained above. It presents a concise summary to reflect how each study addressed BIPV customization to meet certain pre-defined objectives. All deductions from made from the experimental investigations were synthesized and analyzed in the discussion that follows the table.
Table 4. Research investigations on BIPV façade customization.

4.2. Assessment of BIPV Customization Parameters

Table 4 shows that all the studies reviewed give focus to energy generation and architectural integration; most also focus on performance and optimization of the BIPV façade; few focus on cost and environmental issues. This is reminiscent of the general fact that a BIPV façade is primarily a building element with energy producing capability. Thus, its integration and optimization of its performance are significantly important. The country of study and BIPV façade type highlight the potentiality in a variety of countries and application in building location. The variety of objective and approach in the various studies was expected, and provided a broad spectrum to carry out the review. However, in order to provide a sensible analysis, categorization was done at each stage without bias to the original intent of the researchers.

4.2.1. Innovation and Custom Category

Statistically, nine of the cases focused on design of a custom BIPV product [51,52,55,80,81,82,83,89,95], only four focused on a customization in the integration process [63,81,84,94], while 12 combined both product and integration concerns in their research [17,53,63,64,85,86,87,88,90,91,92,93]. This suggests that most custom BIPV façade products are designed with attention on the potential for proper architectural integration. Each approach is uniquely different, yet they meet the same goals of energy generation, aesthetics, and daylighting or thermal control. It is important to consolidate at this point the fact that conventional BIPV façades can provide some of these gains along with energy generation. However, these customized BIPV have the potential to out-perform standard types based on pre-design specifications and functionally-driven objectives, which emphasize these other benefits.
Regarding the customization level, four were purely elemental [51,52,80,82], eight were compositional at the module-level [64,81,83,88,89,91,92,95], and five were compositional at the façade-level [17,53,81,84,94]; eight studies combined all of the levels [55,82,85,86,87,90,93,96]. Comparing elemental versus compositional level, studies can be more easily carried out using conventional PV modules without the requirement of a custom-designed module. As this will require less time to fabricate the test specimens, it is probable that compositional studies are thus preferred, and were thus more numerous. However, using conventional modules for customization suggests innovative and creative applications.

4.2.2. Customization Strategy

The studies showed varying levels of complexity in the strategies used to achieve the objective of customization. It is clear from the examples that this was achieved by an interdisciplinary approach to BIPV product design. It therefore suggests that the accomplishment of custom BIPV modules requires input across several disciplines. While this may be more demanding and expensive, it creates the opportunity for greater novelty and innovative ideas. Enhanced flexibility and variety was noticed in the strategic approach applied in custom BIPV integration studies.
In the investigated cases, three were SPV [64,85,94], four were MCF [51,52,80,89], four were EDM [53,63,81], and 14 combined two or more strategies [17,55,82,83,84,86,87,88,90,91,92,93,95,96]. Clear evidence thus presents a combination of various strategies is required to achieve BIPV façade customization. In the cases of combined strategies, most of the studies addressed customization at both an elemental and compositional level, reflecting a holistic approach. Furthermore, most of the studies in this class were carried out to address aesthetic or thermal control objectives. Deductively therefore, the combined strategy approach is preferred for BIPV façade customization as it covers various multi-dimensional issues in the design.

4.2.3. Architectural Function

All the studied cases showed interest in energy generation potential of the custom BIPV, but to varying degrees. With regards to the added functions, [17] studies addressed thermal control [17,53,63,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,91,92,93,94,95], [15] addressed aesthetics [17] and, [11] addressed daylighting functionality based on research objective or cell type selection as all a-Si applications permit some degree of light transmission [7,63,64,82,83,85,86,87,92,95]. Also, three addressed energy savings [53,83,87], four specifically on shading [85,86,87,92], and one on cladding [90] and cost [93].
The review shows that although all focused on energy generation of the custom BIPV façade, all focused also on at least one or more added function. More than half of the studies were on thermal control—in terms of added BIPV function; proving capture and reuse of PV thermal energy, as well as reduction of direct solar radiation to the interior. A sizeable number of the studies show a connection with the goal of improving the thermal control or aesthetic appeal of the product. It suggests that customization of BIPV products is in some way primarily driven by these two objectives. We observed that the architectural functions were achieved by all the classified strategies. The import of this finding is that categorization developed for this review of customization strategies for BIPV façades is justifiable, flexible and versatile in applicability.

4.2.4. Results

Performance data from the studies were varied and not reflective of comparisons with a conventional BIPV or a reference case in most cases. Were available, a 4–70% reduction related to power output was observed [51,80,90,95] and a 2–80% increase [52,53,55,96]. It is important to observe that these studies used different strategies with different reference cases. As these studies were also in different climates it is not possible to make a general conclusion on these results. They are however representative of the fact that BIPV façade customization has potentials for performance improvements or otherwise based on the design and specifications
Of the studies related to thermal control with reference cases, 3 showed improvements in relation to power output while 1 showed reductions. Of the studies related aesthetics with reference cases, 4 showed improvements in relation to power output while 2 showed reductions. This suggests the in comparative situations, the process of customization can enhance thermal control and aesthetics with satisfactory performance related to power output.

5. Challenges and Future Prospects

Several challenges exist with the concept of BIPV customization in general and specific terms and several studies have outlined these barriers [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,97]. Firstly, BIPV itself is still in a technological developmental phase. Its full potential is yet to be maximized and studies argue that there are still design codes and standards for application that are not full developed [24,28,30]. This review has further brought to light the vast variations in strategies and approaches with BIPV façade customization. Developing a framework for analysis is thus potentially challenging and requires certain generalizations.
Specific to BIPV façade customization objectives, thermal control and aesthetics were identified as the most frequently studied. However, the several of strategies used in both cases required special manufacturing processes which are not yet standardized on a large scale. Thus, problems with cost, machinery, and standards exist. This scenario is worsened by the identified gap between the PV and building industry [29,30,32]; as the lack of willingness to adopt new technology can be a drawback for custom applications. Further research is required to standardize the assessment of custom BIPV and develop a model for evaluation of strategies. This review intended to identify the potentiality of BIPV customization but does not answer questions related to climatic or regional applications. Customization in relation to cost issues is another area that presents further research potential to yield clear evaluative data. The cost and efficiency of a BIPV system can be lowered by reducing PV module and component manufacturing costs, improving PV and other component efficiencies, and understanding whole life cycle costs [21,98] in relation to local factors and the context when used a building skin [99].
A comparative analysis between research driven BIPV customization and commercial custom BIPV products is also required to reflect the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the variations in performance and perception. The main bottleneck discovered during a BIPV study conducted in an European research project, was in the ability to communicate this enhanced value and the new possibilities to customers and thus justify the higher cost -generally an increment around 20% [66]. Thus, custom BIPV potentials require proper communication of potentials to both the public and professionals.

6. Conclusions

This review strategically raises a theoretical background for a renewed focus on BIPV customization. It is clear that there are several experimental studies which engage in this strategy at one level or the other. Our findings indicate that BIPV façade customization can be carried out with significant advantages which include:
  • Flexibility and applicability at an elemental and compositional level
  • Versatility in development of both custom BIPV products and custom BIPV integration schemes
  • Multiple type strategies in single or combined scenarios can be used to achieve objectives
  • Increase in power output and performance is possible in a range of 2–80% based on design
  • Although, reduction in power output and performance occurs also at a range of 4–70% based on design
In summary, we conclude that BIPV façade customization can address some of the barriers with conventional BIPV façades relating to product efficiency and aesthetic design. It can also be a driver of enhanced innovative product design for architectural integration. The extensive research and global interest in BIPV over the last one decade is not likely to abate. Areas such as daylighting, self-cleaning PV glazing, aesthetics using color, form or shapes, concentrating BIPV, perovskite-based solar cells and solar trees are some of the emerging areas [36,45,100,101,102,103]. With shifting policies, government tariffs and policy changes, it will also be interesting to investigate the possibility of using demonstration projects in certain regions as a push for BIPV-wide acceptance. Such projects will be opportunities to communicate the significant benefits of BIPV customisation and advance its adoption.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the United Arab Emirates University towards this review as part of an on-going doctoral research.

Author Contributions

Daniel Efurosibina Attoye developed the concept and framework for investigation, carried out data collection and wrote the initial manuscript. Kheira Tabet Aoul and Ahmed Hassan verified the scholastic depth of the paper, carried out a critical review of the structure and content, and also supervised the analysis and findings of this work. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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