VC-21A-A004 -- Fire Smoke Control for Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV)

The green building technologies such as photovoltaics have been widely applied in the new and built environment to reduce the green house gas emission and energy consumption. Compared to the building attached photovoltaics, Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPVs) drive more changes in building envelope. The previous study is mostly focused on the fire characteristics of PV panels while there is still a lack of knowledge on the fire safety of installed PV on the building. Therefore, tackling the fire safety of BIPV is more complicated since, for example, the fire hazards including smoke generation of solar glazing closely affect the fire safety of the building and occupants. This is exemplified in the case of solar double skin façade systems where the stack effect influences on smoke spread from ignited BIPV via the vertical space of plenum in double skin façade. In this study, the smoke behaviour in the plenum and its transfer to the indoor space of a multi-story building was investigated. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were used to study smoke behaviour. The results revealed the importance of fire safety of BIPV double skin facade and increased danger of the solar façade fire caused by smoke spread via the inter-connected vertical place.