VITALITY

_{Prof. Brian Cody, Dipl.-Ing. Sebastian Sautter, BArch MSc Ph.D. Martin Kaftan (Nefroida)}

Initial situation and objectives

For building planning in urban areas, early and integral planning support is necessary for the successful implementation of building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). An existing obstacle is the lack of tools and easy-to-use rules for planning support, especially for non-PV specialists in the early planning stage. The aim of the VITALITY project is to develop design rules and parameter ranges of technically meaningful planning for exemplary use cases with urban context. Furthermore, the influence of BIPV on other planning parameters of buildings (such as thermal comfort, electrical yield) will be investigated. The usability or relevance for BIM systems plays an essential role. According to the definition of the climate targets of the European Union 2009, 2011 and 2015 the widespread use of building-integrated photovoltaics is inevitable. Likewise, the European Building Directive requires the mandatory use of BIPV or other active energy-generating measures. These developments call for increased efforts to simplify and enable BIPV in the planning process of buildings or in urban planning. Furthermore, the Technology Platform Photovoltaics (TPPV) has named BIPV as a central goal of Austrian research and development in a position paper 2014. There, the integration of BIPV planning in new building planning is mentioned as a major point as an opportunity for Austrian BIPV development.

Method

VITALITY provides an important step towards achieving these requirements and goals. It aims to enable tools for integral planning. VITALITY generates numerical but simplified rules that allow a refined BIPV planning already in the design process. In the project, design criteria are analysed and standardisation is investigated and transferred into simplified models. Prototypical buildings are parametrically planned, thermally and light technically simulated and examined with regard to thermal, electrical and BIPV planning. The planning interfaces and the planning information flow are examined and the relevance for BIM systems is mapped.

Result

As a result, design rules are developed from the simplified models and the parametric simulation. They are optimized at an early stage of planning for the requirements of flexibility of the planner and accuracy of the yield prognosis for BIPV.

Duration

February 2017 - January 2019

Partners

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (Konsortialführung)

Technische Universität Graz, Institut für Gebäude und Energie - IGE, Österreich

EURAC European Academy of Bozen, Institute for Renewable Energy, Italien

teamgmi Ingenieurbüro GmbH, Österreich

Lund University, LTH, Architecture and Built Environment

Energy and Building Design (LTH-EBD), Schweden

ATB-Becker e.U., Österreich

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