The Path to Standardization in the BIPV Industry

In recent years, Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) technology has revolutionized the development path of green buildings. From rooftop photovoltaic tiles to translucent curtain walls, diversified photovoltaic building materials have gradually broken through technological barriers and integrated deeply with architectural design. Standardized construction systems and policy frameworks have further consolidated the foundation for large-scale industry development.

However, beneath the seemingly prosperous industrial landscape, a high degree of customization is quietly forming a bottleneck in development, and a wave of transformation from "non-standard customization" to "standard output" is urgently needed.

In recent years, the BIPV industry has experienced a period of rapid development. Taking photovoltaic glass building materials and BIPV technology as examples, the types of photovoltaic building materials have become very rich, covering translucent photovoltaic glass for building facade curtain walls, photovoltaic building materials with simulated building material textures and colored patterns, and products such as roof photovoltaic skylights and photovoltaic tiles. At the same time, in the residential field, products such as photovoltaic sunrooms, small-size photovoltaic tiles, and small items such as photovoltaic railings and photovoltaic floor tiles have also appeared. The installation technologies of these application scenarios are also relatively mature and standardized, laying a solid foundation for the rapid development of the BIPV industry.

In addition, various local industry standards and local standards regarding building photovoltaics have been issued, and policies mandating the installation of photovoltaic systems in newly constructed buildings and renovations of existing buildings have also provided strong support for the rapid and standardized development of the BIPV industry. Therefore, from the perspective of photovoltaic building materials and installation technologies, this is no longer a difficulty restricting the development of the BIPV industry.

Structural Contradictions Behind the Prosperity of Customization

Despite the significant progress made in the BIPV industry, a high degree of customization has become a key factor restricting its further development. Currently, most projects in the BIPV field have high requirements for customized product production and matching scheme technologies. This not only requires companies to simultaneously master the dual capabilities of photovoltaic performance optimization and architectural aesthetics matching, but also fundamentally raises the industry's entry barrier.

Efficiency Constraints:High entry barriers, complex product production, and high requirements for matching scheme design and technology limit the promotion speed of BIPV projects. The long-cycle collaboration from scheme design to construction completion slows down the speed of large-scale replication of projects.

Cost Dilemma:A high degree of customization means high production costs for photovoltaic building materials, which directly affects the economic viability of BIPV projects and thus influences the decisions of owners or investors.

Closed Ecosystem:The high complexity of cross-professional collaboration hinders the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises and new entrants. It requires cross-industry professional technical capabilities in both the construction and photovoltaic industries, and simultaneously mastering the various product technology requirements for various application scenarios of BIPV. This makes the industry entry barrier high and restricts more companies and personnel from entering.

This development model, which sacrifices efficiency for adaptability, although it built a technological moat in the early stages of the industry, is difficult to support the long-term market expansion needs.

Standardization Restructures the Industrial Value Chain

The core of solving the customization dilemma lies in deconstructing the original integrated product logic and gradually establishing a new industrial paradigm of "standardized components + flexible combination".

Standardization has become an important direction for guiding the future development of the BIPV industry. While ensuring that the aesthetics, safety, and thermal insulation performance of building projects are met, more standardized photovoltaic building materials need to be applied on a large scale in the BIPV industry.

Reduce Costs:Standardized products promote mass production, releasing the benefits of economies of scale and activating the market dynamics of BIPV projects.

Simplify Design and Construction:Standardized design breaks down technological barriers, shortens professional conversion cycles, and builds a collaborative innovation ecosystem with multiple participants.

Enhance Market Competitiveness:Standardized solutions adapt to multiple scenarios, break through local market limitations, pave the underlying channels for large-scale industry development, and enhance the market competitiveness of the BIPV industry.

In this process, the focus of industry competition will shift from the comparison of single product performance to the competition for standardization discourse power and the construction of ecological synergy capabilities. Those companies that first complete the layout of the standardization system will seize the core nodes of the new photovoltaic building supply chain.

To promote the standardized development of the BIPV industry, governments and enterprises need to work together. Governments can introduce more supportive policies to encourage the research and development and application of standardized products; enterprises should also strengthen technological research and development and market promotion to improve the market competitiveness and user acceptance of standardized products.

A high degree of customization is one of the main challenges facing the current development of the BIPV industry. By leading the future development direction of the BIPV industry through standardization, costs can be reduced, design and construction can be simplified, market competitiveness can be enhanced, and the rapid development of the BIPV industry can be promoted.