Design of a Ventilated Facade Integrating a Luminescent Solar Concentrator Photovoltaic Panel

The increasing trend towards decarbonization requires the reduction of the environmental impact of the building sector that currently accounts for approximately 40% of the total CO2 emissions of European countries. Even though Luminescent Solar Concentrator (LSC) panels could be a very promising technology to be installed in urban environments, there is still little implementation of LSC panels in building facades. Here, the realization of a Ventilated Facade (VF) integrating an LSC device as an external pane is presented and a preliminary numerical and experimental investigation is used to evaluate the interaction between the different structure components. Thanks to the realization of a dedicated mock-up finite element method, models are calibrated and validated against experimental measurements, showing a good correspondence between simulated and measured data. Moreover, the electrical characterization of the LSC panel confirms that large area devices can be used as an external skin of VF, reporting a photovoltaic efficiency of 0.5%. The system's thermal and optical properties (estimated thanks to the software COMSOL Multiphysics) encourage the continuation of the research by considering different technologies for the VF internal skin, by scaling up the case study, and by running the simulation of an entire building considering winter and summer energy demands.

Automated summary

The decarbonization trend requires reducing the environmental impact of the building sector, which currently contributes to 40% of total CO2 emissions in Europe. Luminescent Solar Concentrator (LSC) panels have great potential for urban environments but have limited implementation in building facades. This study presents a Ventilated Facade integrating an LSC device as an external pane and investigates their interaction through numerical and experimental methods. The results show that the system has good thermal and optical properties, supporting further research.