Thermal Performance of Photovoltaic Systems Integrated in Buildings

Abstract

1.1 History of photovoltaic systems ... Photovoltaics is one of the leading chains of "sustainable development". Indeed, when one observes the development programs of energy systems in the countries or nations that move towards sustainable development, we find that the solar (and through it the production of energy through photovoltaics) represents the main axis of development. One might at first believe that knowledge of the photovoltaic effect is recent. In fact, we must go back to 1839 with the French physicist Edmund Becquerel who first discovered the photovoltaic effect. It was during the period between the second half of the 19th and the Second World War (1945) that scientific knowledge related to solar phenomena were mastered. Thus, in 1875, Werner von Siemens presented to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin an article on the photovoltaic effect in semiconductors and it was Albert Einstein who first was able to explain the photovoltaic principle, thereby won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923. After the Second World War, when the world gets in another war called "cold war" between the East Block in the West Block, the simmering conflict reached its apogee in the arms race and especially in the space conquest. The space industry is now rapidly finding new and innovative solutions that would power satellites into space. This was a boon for the photovoltaic sector and will help structure an industry. Thus, in 1954, with the developed of a high efficiency photovoltaic cell for the time (6%) and in 1958, the rise of the yield to 9% and above, VANGUARD, the first satellite equipped with photovoltaic cells was sent to the space. The oil shocks of the 1970s allowed the industry to begin its development in civilian applications in 1973 with the construction of the first house powered by solar cells at the University of Delaware. The next step was the construction of the first car equipped with a photovoltaic energy, which in 1983 covered a distance of 4000 km in Australia. Yet in 1980, while the industry is launched commercially, the following years have seen its development focus mainly on rural electrification as well as some isolated houses for professional use (refuges, measuring stations, etc.) and for many villages in developed countries. Since 1990, awareness of the phenomenon of global warming induced the development of the concept of sustainable development, with effect of boosting the photovoltaic and allows it to pass a critical level.