BI2PV Simulator for Optimized BIPV Design in Industrial Buildings

The integration of photovoltaics (PV) into industrial buildings remains inhibited by the lack of unified tools that reconcile architectural constraints, energy performance, and economic viability. We present Industrial Building Integrated PV (BI²PV) simulator, an interactive simulator developed with MATLAB App Designer, encompassing the entire workflow: import and interpolation of NSRDB (National Solar Radiation Database) data and industrial consumption profiles, generation of six weather scenarios, dynamic selection of PV modules from the Sandia database, optimal sizing based solely on available surfaces, cost–benefit analysis, calculation of return on investment (ROI), and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) combined with TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) multi-criteria ranking to rank the PV modules from the Sandia database. Our proposed BI²PV simulator also features a 3D generative module for automatic panel layout on roofs and facades. The simulator is applied to an industrial site located in Haguenau, Grand Est (France), yielding optimal capacities of 400 – 2 500 kWp (kilowatt-peak) under clear-sky (“Clear” scenario) conditions, 500 – 2 900 kWp in the “Real” scenario, and 2 100 – 5 500 kWp in rainy (“Rainy” scenario) conditions, with a ROI of 6.45 years in the “Real” case versus nearly 24 years in the “Rainy” case. Module_ 451, a GaAs module with 413 W nominal power and a 1.50 m2 area, emerges as the optimal choice, requiring 5 812 panels. Finally, it outputs a unified ten-minutes interval database of weather–production, ready for predictive models and advanced control tools.