The Impact of Roof Coating and Solar PV System in the Tropical Region of Ghana

Abstract

Adding PV module to roof has impacts on building`s electricity energy consumption. The aim of this paper is to assess the energy consumption performance of buildings by integrating solar Photovoltaic (PV) system into buildings with roof coating.  An experiment was conducted to verify the efficient outcome of PV module using a building from the Anaji area of Takoradi in the Western region of Ghana. A framework energy model was proposed to analyse the integrated contribution of coating and PV performance using PVSOL. The temperature of the coated roof surfaces underneath the PV panels were significantly lower than that of the exposed roof in the daytime. The system integrated energy efficiency for flat and tilted overhead PV roofs are 63.35 % and 62.73 %, respectively. Using the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) performance criterion, the monthly energy savings for coated roofs with solar PV is 28.86 kW or GH¢ 340.21; while the monthly energy savings for coated roofs without PV is 25.91 kW or GH¢ 303.00. Overall, the proposed integrated coated roof with PV outperforms the coated roof without PV. Validating the model, the mean relative errors (MRE) were all below 10%, while the accuracy of Power-Added Efficiency (PAE) were all beyond 95%. Thus, the proposed integrated roof coating and solar PV model for optimizing energy consumption is reliable.