BIPV's impact on outdoor comfort in four block types

Abstract Although building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) façades have been extensively researched in the context of electricity generation and carbon emission reduction, their impact on the urban microclimate is not yet fully understood. Few existing studies focus only on specific types of urban blocks or are based on generic models and do not account for climate change. This study addresses these gaps by investigating the impact of BIPV façades on outdoor thermal comfort for four urban block typologies commonly observed in Zurich, Switzerland, under current and future climate scenarios. Urban microclimate simulations were performed for a hot summer day using the Envi-met simulation software. Results show that the urban typology has a stronger influence on outdoor thermal comfort than whether BIPV has been installed or not, evidenced by the variation of average daily Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) between the four typologies up to around 3 °C. Furthermore, climate change alone leads to a total increase of about 2 °C in average daily UTCI. Relative to these factors, the influence of BIPV on UTCI appears to be minimal. Depending on the time of day, BIPV facades result in a UTCI change ranging from −0.11 °C to +0.08 °C under the current climate and from −0.1 °C to +0.06 °C under the future climate scenario.

Keywords: Urban microclimate, Urban heat, BIPV, Outdoor thermal comfort, Decision trees, Feature importance.

@inproceedings{duran2025impact,
  title={Impact of BIPV on Outdoor Thermal Comfort: Comparative Study of Four Urban Block Typologies},
  author={Duran, Ay{\c{c}}a and Sogno, Rino and Buettiker, Dominic and Mettas, Loukas and Stengele, Kaspar and Waibel, Christoph and Schlueter, Arno},
  booktitle={International Association of Building Physics},
  pages={539--545},
  year={2025},
  organization={Springer}
}​​​​​​​