Variations of PV Panel Performance Installed over a Vegetated Roof and a Conventional Black Roof

Abstract

The total worldwide photovoltaic (PV) capacity has been growing from about 1 GW at the beginning of the twenty-first century to over 300 GW in 2016 and is expected to reach 740 GW by 2022. PV panel efficiency is reported by PV manufacturers based on laboratory testing under Standard Testing Condition with a specific temperature of 25 °C and solar irradiation of 1000 W/m2. This research investigated the thermal interactions between the building roof surface and PV panels by examining the differences in PV panel temperature and energy output for those installed over a green roof (PV-Green) and those installed over a black roof (PV-Black). A year-long experimental study was conducted over the roof of an educational building with roof mounted PV panels with a system capacity of 4.3 kW to measure PV underside surface temperature (PV-UST), ambient air temperature between PV panel and building roof (PV-AT), and PV energy production (PV-EP). The results show that during the summer the PV-Green consistently recorded lower PV-UST and PV-AT temperatures and more PV-EP than PV-Black. The average hourly PV-EP difference was about 0.045 kWh while the maximum PV-EP difference was about 0.075 kWh, which represents roughly a 3.3% and 5.3% increase in PV-EP. For the entire study period, EP-Green produced 19.4 kWh more energy, which represents 1.4% more than EP-Black