The battle of light - solar cells in glass facades

Over the last years, a range of semi-transparent PV panels has appeared on the market. Although these panels inherently produce less energy than their light-blocking counterparts, they are considered an attrac-tive element in low-energy buildings as they can impact on the façade's ability to both produce and save energy.

When integrated carefully into glass facades, the semi-transparent PV modules will block off the energy-rich and offensive portion of the incoming sunlight, and thereby potentially improve not only the indoor visual and thermal comfort.

This investigation covers an examination of the PV panels' light-filtering abilities in a daylight laboratory, ar-chitectural sketches illustrating various façade-compositions with the actual PV panels integrated, a visuali-zation of the most promising sketches by means of mock-ups and finally computer simulations revealing the PV façade's impact on the building's net energy consumption.

The results and experiences gained in the experimental work are carefully collected and analysed in an in-terdisciplinary context focussing on the full architectural potential of semi-transparent PV panels in glass facades.