PV on façades: A financial, technical and environmental assessment

As roof space has become increasingly occupied, facades serve as an alternative for deploying PV, often in the form of Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV). In this study, a comprehensive analysis over multiple years of the value of integrating PV on facades with different configurations is provided. The comparison comprises financial, technical and environmental metrics and spans the Dutch and German electricity sector. As expected, due to the much higher yield of optimally oriented PV, it generates higher revenues and reduce more CO₂ emissions than facade PV. Over the course of five years of this study, south, east, and west facades reduce 1725, 1492, 1335 kg of CO₂ emission per kWp of PV installation, while this is 2434 for the optimally oriented PV. However, analyzing the value factor of PV-generated electricity shows east and west facade are increasingly generating more economic value compared to optimally-oriented PV: the value factor or capture rate of optimally-oriented PV decreased to 0.73 in 2023, whereas the value factor for east facade and west facade remained higher (0.87 and 0.84, respectively). From a technical viewpoint, facade PV results in much higher self-consumption ratios 42% for east facade, 46% for west facade, compared to only 30% for optimally-oriented (all 1 kWp installed per 1 MWh demand). Concluding, facade PV, while having a much lower yield than optimally oriented PV, does hold some significant advantages over optimally-oriented PV – mainly in technical terms and in economic terms. Therefore, facade PV can be seen as a very promising option for the PV sector in general, and the BIPV sector specifically – especially in a more and more congested electricity grid.