Economics of Building Integrated PV In China

This paper presents a technical and economic analysis of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) applications for commercial buildings in Shanghai and Beijing China. The analysis assumes that the array area is 105 m (equivalent to 6.3 kWp for amorphous silicon thin film technology and 10.0 kWp for polycrystalline technology). Rooftop and curtain wall applications are considered. BIPV is analyzed as: an energy supply technology delivering bulk energy (kWh); a buildings services technology offering energy demand management (primarily, peak-shaving benefits, i.e., lower kW) and emergency power (through the addition of a modest amount of storage); and finally, BIPV as an architectural element, reducing the materials cost of the building, while providing building services (this typically requires wall-mounting of the PV array). The results of our analysis indicate that the economic value of a PV array would be optimized in a configuration that serves all four functions: energy supply, demand management, emergency power and architectural value. Using software developed at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, we estimate that the payback period for multi-service BIPV systems would be less than five years.