New York City is experiencing an unprecedented construction boom. With additional projects in the pipeline — such as the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site and various other major projects underway throughout NYC — this is a unique time to look at how the use of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) systems may have an impact on the City’s future skyline. One of the main drivers attributed to the growing interest in BIPV systems is NYC’s challenge to meet growing peak electricity requirements. NYC is an electric ‘loadpocket’. It is geographically isolated — consisting of 3 islands and a peninsula — yet it has a peak demand of well over 10,000 MW. To maintain voltage support and reliability standards, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), which manages NY State’s bulk power transmission system and wholesale power markets, has determined that NYC must be capable of generating 80% of its peak electric power requirements within the 5 boroughs that make up the city. However, power plant siting has generally become more difficult and this is especially true in NYC, where real estate options are constrained, real estate values are high and community values overlap. [2]” In addition to the challenge of power supply,

[3] Introduction

An interactive wall is a building’s external wall, which reacts to weather conditions and transforms them according to user’s requirements. It is an important element of the indoor environment’s control system and, in consequence, for energy management of the whole building. The inputs of the interactive wall system include weather parameters, independent of human will and impossible to predict in the long term. Outputs include parameters of the indoor environment. They vary for different kinds of human activity and change during the whole day or over different seasons. Both the inputs and the outputs of the system are changeable, although in different ways. The understanding of this model is necessary to realize that the interactive wall system is very complicated and difficult to implement in practice.

[4] Natural ventilation