A method for predicting the economic potential of (building-integrated) photovoltaics in urban areas based on hourly Radiance simulations

摘要

This study presents and demonstrates a methodology for calculating the economic potential of photovoltaic installations in urban areas including the previously often disregarded potential on building facades. The analysis of a 2 km(2) urban area has shown that building facades there provide almost triple the area of building roofs. However due to non-optimal inclination and orientation, they receive only 41% of the total irradiation. From this, the economic potential under present market conditions was calculated, resulting in 17% of all analyzed building surfaces, i.e. 0.3 km(2) of roof surfaces being economically exploitable for photovoltaic installations already now which corresponds to an installed capacity of 47 MW. Considering further a material substitution from the building integration of the photovoltaic installations, an economic potential of up to 56 MWp or 0.4 km(2) results, of which up to 6 MW, or 0.04 km(2) are economically installable on building facades. Facade-mounted installations would then account for 13% of the economic potential.