In 2005, China established a national design standard for all public (commercial) buildings, which focused on HVAC and building envelope. Recognizing the amount of energy residential buildings had recently been consuming, China began updating its residential building energy codes with assistance from Energy Foundation, NRDC, and LBNL.
Based on the developed mathematical model, this paper assesses the solar irradiation resources and BIPV potential of residential buildings in different climate zones of China. It is found that roofs are the first choice for BIPV installation, followed by south façades, especially in high-latitude cities, and then east and west facades.
China’s first residential building energy codes were established in 1986. They encompassed standards on heating for the northern cold regions, and were revised in 1995. In 2001, these were extended to include the hot-summer cold-winter central region, and the hot-summer warm-winter southern region in 2003.
Residential blocks in China have a high potential for solar energy development. However, residential blocks encountered difficulties in the process of large-scale application of photovoltaic technology, which is due to the lack of relevant theoretical research.
There are relatively few researches on BIPV design of rural residential building in China. According to different ways of combining photovoltaic system and building envelope structure, some scholars (Du 2013; Liu 2018; Liu and Sun 2014) proposed that BIPV can be divided into two categories: “installation type” and “building material type”.
The solar irradiation resources of building façades including the north façade are examined. The photovoltaic contributions to net zero energy residential buildings are assessed in China. Partial shading is considered for modeling the building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system.