A case study of PV installation for an urban building in downtown Montreal

In recent years, Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) systems have become more popular due to the increased attention that renewable energy resources have received as well as the decreasing trend of photovoltaic (PV) panel manufacturing costs. Many issues remain for researchers in terms of the proper design for different buildings and especially for urban cases. Considering the importance of these issues, this paper presents an accurate design of a PV system for the specific case of an urban commercial building located in the downtown Montreal. Insolation and shadow analysis have been done by means of novel techniques and investigation of different design scenarios has been performed. Furthermore, energy production levels of each scenario are obtained and for the best scenario, the load energy demand is compared with the PV energy production level.