Challenges for Building Integrated PV in High-Rise Urban Environments - The Example of PV on Utrecht Central Station

A number of challenges and design issues for building-integrated PV in urban areas is investigated in general and for a specific case study: a large railway station in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Because of the surrounding highrise buildings that are already present around the station or that may be erected in the near future, shading loss could become an important limiting factor for the installable PV potential. Detailed shading loss analyses were performed for the area of the platform canopies and for the terminal roof. Yield reductions of more that 20% were observed for some sections of the roof area and these section were further excluded from the potential estimate. Based on these analyses a total installable PV potential of 647 kWp was found. In the end it has been proposed that the platform canopies will be equipped with 149 kWp of semitransparent PV panels within the next six years.