This paper presents the modeling method and coordinate control strategy for photovoltaic dc building module (PV-DCBM) based building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system. The PV-DCBM based BIPV system consists of plenty of PV-DCBMs and a centralized inverter which are coupled to the common dc bus in parallel. Each PV-DCBM is integrated with a PV building material to extract maximum power from it and then a centralized inverter is used to transfer the power to the grid. The PV-DCBM based BIPV system has some significant advantages for building integrated applications, such as individual MPPT, inherent data monitor, low cost and excellent expandability. A coordinate control strategy based on energy balance of the PV-DCBM based BIPV system is proposed to realize the individual control for each PV-DCBM and the centralized inverter. The accurate small-signal model of the PV-DCBM based BIPV system is built based on the proposed operation principle and a detailed design approach of the coordinate controller is proposed. Experimental results on the laboratory prototype verify the validity of the proposed modeling and coordinate control method. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.