Testing and Standards for new BIPV products

BIPV components provide added values to the building and for this application they should be designed to perform functions as defined in the REGULATION (EU) No 305/2011 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 9 March 2011. So the need for new BIPV products strongly exists and specific standards and testing must be appointed. At the moment the prEN 50583:2012 is just in preparation at European level. It contains links to existing Standards already applied for traditional building components. This paper gives an overview of the general requirements imposed by this Standard, introduces the European project Bfirst, aimed to realize specific BIPV products, and present preliminary results made at ENEA on traditional modules for optical and thermal requirements that could be applied to new BIPV products.