Design and analysis of urban building integrated photovoltaic system simulation software

A single comprehensive software package was developed for architects and building designers to optimize suitable location on various facades of urban buildings, where when photovoltaic modules were placed, would generate maximum energy. AutoCAD, the most widely used software by building architects, along with the ECOTECT, a building analysis tool, were used as primary tools in this software package. The process of solar analysis was automated with the help of customizing tools such as LISP, Visual Basic for Application and LUA scripts, creating a single plug-in for AutoCAD. The objective of this software package is to perform solar radiation analysis and obtain performance characteristics of the Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) system, taking into account shading and reflection from neighboring buildings, all within AutoCAD environment. In this project, we developed an urban building model in AutoCAD and performed the solar radiation analysis with the developed software tool. The performance characteristics were obtained and compared with the results from MATLAB model, previously presented [1]. The software package also incorporates provision to calculate energy from various commercially available solar modules.