Laboratory Testing of Small-Scale Active Solar Façade Module

Buildings are linked to a significant untapped energy saving potential, accounting for 40 % of European Union’s (EU) final energy and 36 % of CO₂ emissions. Energy efficient building envelopes plays the key role to achieve decarbonization of the EU’s building stock by 2050. Active building envelopes are emerging and novel trend offering the paradigm shift in perception of building enclosures. Paper presents study of active solar façade containing phase change material for energy storage. Study seeks for optimisation of solar façade module by introducing dynamic component and variating in the composition of module itself to ensure faster energy harvesting and minimise the heat losses at discharging phase. Comparative tests were carried out in laboratory, in controlled heating and cooling conditions to evaluate impact of dynamic component. The dynamic component has reflective inner coating that focuses solar radiation on the element in heating phase and aerogel insulation filling in the blades that decreases heat loss in the cooling phase. Varying components in the design were used– thickness of aerogel insulation, Fresnel lens and width of concentrating cone diameter. Wide range of phase change material average temperature was observed 24 °C in setups with full aerogel filling to 50 °C in setup Fresnel lens. Average temperature in phase change material was reached higher in all setups with dynamic component compared to identical setups without dynamic component. Temperature differences were in the range from 1 °C in aerogel filled setups till 6 °C in setups with Fresnel lens.