Photovoltaic/Thermal Systems: Advances and Contribution to the Development of Renewable Energy Communities

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change and the energy crisis are the major challenges faced in today’s world. The exploitation of renewable energy sources together with the implementation of energy efficiency measures are well-recognized solutions to these challenges. In particular, the urgent need to increase the contribution of renewable energy resources has been guiding research on designing new technologies to exploit these clean and free energy sources.

Solar energy is recognized as the most promising energy source due to its availability on Earth throughout the year. Different types of solar technologies have been proposed to harvest the maximum possible energy and convert it into electricity and/or heat: from photovoltaic to concentrated solar power, and from solar thermal collectors to hybrid collectors. Among them, photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collectors are of a great importance because they can produce heat and electricity simultaneously, leading not only to a higher energy conversion per unit of the installed area but also to environmental benefits compared to a separate production approach. To provide scientific communities with a track on the recent advances in the field of PV/T systems, this Special Issue aims to collect studies focused on: 

• New techniques for enhancing the energy performance of this technology.
• Modeling of PV/T systems’ operation based on experimental data.
• Modeling for forecasting the energy and heat production from PV/T systems via machine learning approaches.
• Provision of performance maps to easily detect variation in the power-to-heat ratio with boundary conditions.
• Integration with buildings and energy storage systems (either thermal or electric).
• Selection of the optimal sizing and operation strategies of PV/T systems while accounting for the features of final users (such as residential, tertiary, industry, and agriculture) and geographical locations.
• Provision of control strategies for the coordinated operation of PV/T systems with other facilities of the same products, such as power-to-heat technologies or other cogeneration units.
• Environmental and economic analysis of PV/T systems.

In addition, this Special Issue will consider papers focused on the contribution of PV/T systems in the development of renewable energy communities. It is widely recognized that to achieve renewable energy communities, it is not sufficient to install a new capacity but instead to provide means for an easy share of the produced energy flows (both electricity and/or heat) among different consumers. In this respect, papers focused on solutions for sizing and operating PV/T systems in this context will be welcomed.

Finally, please note that other research studies on the proposed topic which were not explicitly accounted for in the previous list will be also considered.

Dr. Pietro Catrini
Dr. Stefania Guarino
Dr. Marina Bonomolo
Dr. Alessandro Buscemi
Guest Editors

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• solar energy technology
• photovoltaic/thermal collectors
• renewable cogeneration systems
• renewable sources for energy communities
• integrated storage systems
• machine learning approaches for RES