Identification of Factors Influencing Development of Photovoltaic (PV) Implementation in Singapore

Despite the steady growth of grid-connected installed capacity in Singapore in the last decade and intensive government effort towards “solarization”, implementation of photovoltaics (PV) and especially building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) into the built environment has not gathered as much momentum as would have been expected given the country’s ample solar energy resource potential, strong economic fundamentals and the robust real estate sector. Based on a conducted web-survey and qualitative interviews among local professionals, this paper examines the obstacles, potentials and drivers that could facilitate and accelerate BIPV and PV facade integration, as well as needs that could encourage wider PV use. In order to define a unified strategy, aligning the stakeholders’ views, the following disputable factors are pointed out and discussed: (1) incomplete understanding of BIPV and building-applied photovoltaics (BAPV) among stakeholders, (2) costs of BIPV systems, (3) low awareness of and confidence in “integrability” of PV modules, (4) incomplete knowledge about and insufficiently investigated PV performance and (5) potential of PV facade and roof integration. Since the costs are the key identified factor for BIPV implementation, life-cycle cost (LCC) assessments of PV facade and roof integrations have been performed, which supported the search for solutions to identified problems. The performed analysis and findings present the basis for the development of a long-term holistic strategy for PV implementation in Singapore that could help the highly-urbanized, tropical resource- and land-constrained island city-state reduce the dependency on fossil fuels and achieve the climate change targets, thus promoting a more sustainable built environment.