Bucky Lab 2020: - Green solar – cooling a solar facade with plants

03/11/2021 | Print view

Through the evaporation of water from their leaves, the plants help to cool the solar modules of the facade and so help to make them more efficient. - © TU Delft / Bucky Lab — © TU Delft / Bucky Lab

Through the evaporation of water from their leaves, the plants help to cool the solar modules of the facade and so help to make them more efficient.

This student prototype developed by facade Master’s Degree students at the TU Delft’s Bucky Lab offers to solve the problem of efficiency loss in solar facades due to heat. The trick is integrating plants:

In the Mediterranean climate the efficiency of PV modules tends to decrease because of the hot temperatures. In addition, this increases the urban heat island effect in cities. The solution of the student team of Fawzi Bata, Daphne de Bruin, Sabine de Groot, Anna Maria Koniari, Doris van Uffelen, Nadine van Westeropis is a solar facade system, attached to the blind facade of apartment blocks, which works efficiently in hot climates using evaporative cooling of an integrated hydroponic plant system. The plants lower the ambient temperature which increase the efficiency of the PV panels and reduce the urban heat island effect.

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The solar module can be further optimized by choosing plants that evaporate more, but these may also require more maintenance and care, which on a high facade might be difficult and expensive. Yet another way to make the energy generation more efficient is to change the tilt of the PV modules more towards the sun.