Abstract
Whilst there are growing interests in pursuing energy efficiency and zero-energy buildings in built environment, it is widely recognised that Building-Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) is one of the most promising and required technologies to achieve these goals in recent years. Although BIPV is a broadly utilized technique in variety of fields in built environments, it is required that generation of BIVP should be analysed and calculated by external specialists. The aim of this research is to focus on developing a new diagram for prediction of the pre-estimation model in early design stage to harness solar radiation data, PV types, slopes, azimuth and so forth. The results of this study show as follows: 1) We analysed 162 districts in a national level and the examined areas were categorised into five zones. The standard deviation of the results was 2.9 per cent; 2) The increased value of solar radiation on a vertical plane in five categorised zones was 42kWh/m3, and the result was similar to the average value of 43.8kWh/m3; and 3) The pre-estimation of diagram was developed based on the categorisation of zones and azimuth as well as the results of the developed diagram showed little difference compared to the previously utilised method. The suggested diagram in this paper will contribute to estimate BIPV without any external contribution to calculate the value. Even though the result of this study shows little difference, it is required to investigate a number of different variables such as BIPV types, modules, slope angle and so forth in order to develop an integrated pre-estimation diagram.