The Effect of a Bifacial PV-Based Glazed Facade Applied to an Office Building: Analysis of the Electricity Energy Balance by Means of Artificial Intelligence

New technologies based on photovoltaic devices integrated into windows as active elements exhibit high potential for achieving a significant increase in the energy produced from renewable energy sources (RES), even in urban areas. The building sector has a considerable impact on emissions in the city environment. This work analyses the potential of building integrated photovoltaic systems (BIPVs) by simulating the installation of a bifacial photovoltaic glazed façade for an office building in two Italian cities. The same building is simulated in two different Italian cities, Perugia (PG) and Catania (CT), through EnergyPlus dynamic simulation program. The resulting datasets are used to train a neural network which predicts the energy demand for cooling and heating required to maintain comfortable indoor temperatures. Additionally, bifacial PV-based glazed façades are appropriately simulated for the calculation of the hourly energy balance during winter and summer seasons. Finally, the environmental benefits obtained through the usage of the PV-glazing system are analysed.