Building Integrated Photovoltaic panels to reduce and meet the cooling load for tropical-coastal cities

As a consequence of hot and humid climate the tropical coastal regions are exposed to high energy demand throughout the year. Works in the past had focused on mitigating peak cooling demands by improving heat balances on building levels utilizing efficient technologies, passive system and demand side management strategies. In this study we explore solar photovoltaic (PV) application, an active building integrated technology on building air conditioning (AC) demand with its added benefits. For this purpose, we use urbanized version of Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with Building Effect Parameterization (BEP) and Building Effect Modelling (BEM) including World Urban Database Access Portal Tool (WUDAPT), local climate zones (LCZs) for urban landscapes. The results from urban WRF coupled with BEP-BEM-WUDAPT is validated for key environmental variables like temperature, humidity, radiation and wind from network of weather stations for tropical coastal region of San Juan Metropolitan Area (SJUA), Puerto Rico. The gridded data available for AC demand is further compared with electrical power available from roof mounted PV panels at different roof-area coverage for each LCZs. It is anticipated that peak AC demand for a PV mounted roof decreases to some extent as it adds a thermal resistance as compared to normal roof. The ratio of electricity production by demand is anticipated to reach more than 1 for low rise LCZs whereas it is anticipated to be lower than 1 for high rise. A unique energy sustainability matrix is created to meet the city-wide demand by implementing PV on rooftops that maximizes outputs with and without storage for the metropolitan region of San Juan.