The application and development of photovoltaic vacuum glazing

Solar photovoltaic (PV) glass has become an architectural feature for building photovoltaic integrated design whilst vacuum glass (VG) is considered to be the most promising transparent insulating building material. They are the most advanced architectural varieties of glass, forming a prosperous R&D direction for the glass industry. But in current engineering applications, there are still several problems needing to be solved, or at least improved, such as low conversion efficiency, photovoltaic glass component failure, low transmittance and high cost. This paper presents a new photovoltaic vacuum glazing (PV-VG) design which utilises the advantages of both PV and VG, and has the potential to solve or mitigate the above mentioned drawbacks. The background and context for this design are introduced first, followed by a review on the application status of building integrated photovoltaic systems in China.