Analysis of BIPV in a UAE building for cooling load reduction

In the developed arid regions, there is much use of glass in the buildings. This causes heat trapping inside the buildings. The cooling of these buildings requires a considerable amount of energy and is detrimental to the ozone layer as well. Work is scarce discussing on-site energy generation strategies along with efficient building design. This work studies the integration of sustainable design strategies into a virtual villa in Dubai using building information modeling (BIM) through Revit and Green Building Studio (GBS). The use of transparent photovoltaic or PV glass instead of typical window glass is studied. It was found that the cooling load requirement decreased with PV glass. Also, the required cooling load can be satisfactorily supplied by the solar PV plant formed by the PV glass installation.