ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the most important themes of this book, namely (1) photovoltaic (PV) integration in the design of products, buildings, and mobility; (2) the motivations for paying attention to PV integration; (3) the relevance of the discipline of industrial-design engineering for the integration of PV technologies in products, buildings, and vehicles; and (4) various approaches toward designing with PVs. This chapter introduces further contents of this book, which are subsequently discussed. In Chapter 2, a short history of PV products will be given. In Chapter 3, PV technologies and their design features related to—among others—coloring and form giving, are presented to provide a general context for the subsequent chapters about product-integrated PVs (Chapter 4), building-integrated PV (Chapter 5), and users of PV products (Chapter 6). In between these chapters, various interesting design cases are shown that will give insights into actual design processes as well as in challenges encountered and solutions found by the design of a solar-powered table; the colorful products that can be designed with luminescent solar concentrator PV technologies; the design of a solar-powered chandelier called Virtue of Blue; solar racing cars; the Solaris building, which is a building-integrated PV project; and a PV-powered charging station for e-bikes.
