Revision history [back]

Yes, EnergyPlus has a PVT collector object to generate electricity (photovoltaic) and collect thermal energy. Note that each PVT collector that you define can either transfer heat to an air stream or a water stream -- one collector cannot transfer heat to both types of fluids.

You will also need other objects in your input file to define the hybrid electric/thermal performance:

• Building Surface: exterior building surface (wall or roof or shade, most likely) that collector is associated with
• SolarCollectorPerformance:PhotovoltaicThermal:Simple object: defines electric/thermal performance details of PVT collector
• Generator:Photovoltaic object: describes an array of PV modules
• PV Performance object: defines the PV generation performance using one of three approaches -- Sandia, Simple, and Equivalent One-Diode
• ElectricLoadCenter:Generators object: defines list of electricity generators to include in the simulation

To be building-integrated PVT, it looks like you can set the Heat Transfer Integration Mode input field of the PVT collector object to one of three options: "IntegratedSurfaceOutsideFace", "IntegratedTranspiredCollector", or "IntegratedExteriorVentedCavity". These three all leverage the building surface temperature calculations of EnergyPlus. There is also a "PhotovoltaicThermalSolarCollector" option for this input field, which is meant for PVT collectors that uses a slightly different set of calculations that focus on changes in temperature for the fluid being heated by the PVT collector. That seems to be more important for your modeling, so if you reference the correct surface name then that should effectively make the PVT collector building-integrated.

There is an example file named ShopWithSimplePVT.idf that illustrates how to define a PVT collector. This file showcases using both air and water as the thermal collector fluid.

It does not appear that the OpenStudio application has the PVT collector object, but the OpenStudio SDK does if you wanted to write a measure to add it to an OpenStudio model (along with the other objects I listed above).

You can read similar questions on PVT in other Unmet Hours posts here and here.