Experimental Analysis of Laminated Bus Bars for Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Applications

Building-Integrated Photovoltaics is a key technology for the generation of renewable energy in the built environment, especially in case of high-rise buildings. A promising solution to reduce costs associated with the on-site electrical installation, is the factory pre-installment of a module-level converter and the electrical interconnection between the modules. An alternative for regular cabling in BIPV systems, is the use of laminated bus bars. The large capacitance of the bus bar reduces the required output capacitance of the module-level converter which is in term beneficial from a cost, reliability and power density perspective. In this paper, an experimental prototype of a BIPV laminated bus bar is designed and tested to highlight the electrical advantages compared to regular cabling. From the measurements, it turns out that the interconnection between the modules is an important design aspect to use the full potential of a bus bar system.