Investigation of thermal and electrical performances of a combined semi-transparent PV-vacuum glazing

Combined semi-transparent PV-vacuum glazing provides low overall heat transfer coefficient, reduces solar heat gain, generates clean electricity and admits comfortable daylight. In this work, thermal and electrical performances of a multicrystalline silicon based PV-vacuum glazing were characterised using indoor test cell. For this particular combined system, PV covered 32% of the glazing area. Two different combinations of PV-vacuum glazing systems were manufactured where for the first case vacuum glazing faced test cell external environment (VPS) and for the second case vacuum glazing faced test cell internal environment (SPV). SPV type was found to have superior performance as PV cell achieved lower temperature than VPS type after 125 min exposure under 1000 W/m2 constant intensity from a simulator. For this type PV-vacuum glazing, overall heat transfer coefficient (U-value) was 0.8 W/m2 K and the solar factor was 0.42. U-value of this PV-vacuum glazing was 66% lower and the solar factor was 46% lower than PV double-glazing. Close power drop from PV due to elevated temperature was observed for both PV-double and PV-vacuum glazing.