Glare from photovoltaic systems

Abstract: With an increasing usage of photovoltaic panels also in urban context the cases of glare caused by photovoltaic systems are raising. Many countries have low or no regulations regarding outdoor glare caused by daylight, therefore legal cases can be complicated. Even though there are thresholds agreed upon for glare indoors there are no thresholds determined for outdoor daylight glare situations, therefore the thresholds suggested so far are compared. Due to the lack of an approved assessment method the aim of this study is to create a method which can be used to assess glare from photovoltaic panels. A comparison study based on the method of the Daylight Glare Potential and a study to determine thresholds for the sun disk luminance were performed to evaluate the functionality of the suggested method. It can be concluded that with additional verifying studies the method can be a way to decrease the cases of glare caused by photovoltaic systems and raise the awareness of this problem already during the planning phase.