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Modular Systems for Energy Conservation and Efficiency
Published in Yatish T. Shah, Modular Systems for Energy Usage Management, 2020
Residential sector contributes heavily to energy consumption and GHG emission, if fossil energy is used for power and heating and cooling. Several measures can be taken to reduce fossil fuel-dependent energy consumption. The first step is to design a passive solar heating home that can make the maximum use of natural solar energy and its distribution within the home without any additional mechanical or electrical means of providing heating and cooling in the home. This method does not provide power within the home. The heating and cooling needs of the home can also be conserved and efficiently managed with various active changes in home such as using phase change materials (PCMs) for energy storage, insulating home in various ways and so on. These changes can all be modular in nature. Finally, power, heating, and cooling needs of a home can be satisfied with the use of solar, geothermal, and wind energy (which are free) instead of fossil energy which can lead to net-zero-energy building. These types of buildings are also called green or carbon-free buildings because they do not emit any GHG to the environment. Zero-energy buildings can also be net producers of energy. Modular approach is implicit in these discussions. These steps are described in more detail in the next section.
Regenerative Design For Achieving Net-Zero Energy Commercial Buildings In Different Climate Types
Published in Manuel Couceiro da Costa, Filipa Roseta, Joana Pestana Lages, Susana Couceiro da Costa, Architectural Research Addressing Societal Challenges, 2017
The fundamental objective of net-zero energy concepts is to use low-cost, locally available, nonpolluting and renewable sources to satisfy building’s energy requirements. The commonly applied accounting methods are net-zero site, net-zero source, net-zero costs, and net-zero emissions (Torcellini 2006). Recent research extends the net-zero energy building methodological framework to introduce the life-cycle perspective in the energy balance, thus allowing the building’s embodied energy and its components to be included in the discussion (Cellura 2014). For retrofit projects, life-cycle energy balance calculation method could be applied to acquire the true environmental influence with respect to both the consumption of energy during operation and the preservation of energy embodied in the buildings’ materials, structure, and technical installations (Marszal 2011). However, the methodology to fulfill the building energy assessment and rating extension for embodied energy calculation still has uncertainties in handling the socio-economic aspects of building construction, which needs to be further explored and investigated (Hernandez 2011). In this paper, net-zero energy building is defined as a building which is able to achieve zero balance for annual energy budget with on-site renewable energy sources. Commercial office retrofit buildings were set as the study target. The study was conducted by investigating the effects of sustainable retrofit strategies on buildings’ energy efficiency in different climate types and introducing renewable energy sources to meet the annual energy needs.
Users in low-energy buildings
Published in Kim Haugbølle, David Boyd, Clients and Users in Construction, 2017
Frédéric Bougrain, Paula Femenías
In the past few years, Sweden has seen a rapid development of low-energy buildings. In 2010, 24 per cent of all new multi-residential construction in western Sweden consisted of low-energy buildings, that is, buildings having an energy performance of 25 per cent less energy use than required by the building regulation (Wahlström et al., 2011). This progress has not been pushed by national regulation but rather by commitment among progressive clients and local environmental policy in larger Swedish cities, which have had specific demands for low-energy construction (often around 60 kWh/m²/year, which was 33 per cent lower than that required by the building regulation at the time). Upcoming European demand for near-zero energy building is a contributing factor pushing for innovation in the field of low-energy construction.
Toward comprehensive zero energy building definitions: a literature review and recommendations
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 2021
Javad Taherahmadi, Younes Noorollahi, Mostafa Panahi
Voss et al. studied the framework of the national ZEB code in Germany (Voss, Musall, and Lichtmeß 2011) to propose a harmonised procedure for balancing. Not only the method takes the energy balance, but it also covers information about energy efficiency and load calculation. In the paper, a definition was presented for ZEB: A zero-energy building is an energy-efficient building which in combination with the public electricity grid meets its total annual primary energy demand, as determined by monthly balancing, by the primary energy credit for electricity surpluses fed into the grid. The electricity generated onsite is used primarily to meet the building's energy demand.Similar to other researches, A NZEB is introduced as a building that can generate energy from renewable energy resources to supply all of its energy demand during a year by Mertz, Raffio, and Kissock (2007). There is another definition for a NZEB, which focuses on the fact that its exported energy to the grid is equal to its annual energy usage disregarding carbon emissions. This kind of buildings does not provide any problem with applying low emission energy supply technologies (Newton and Tucker 2009).
Sensitivity analysis of the variables affecting indoor thermal conditions on unconditioned dwellings in equatorial high-altitude regions from an experimentally validated model
Published in Advances in Building Energy Research, 2021
Freddy Ordóñez, Francisco Jácome, Paulo Castro, Carlos Naranjo-Mendoza
Thermal comfort is a subjective parameter that defines the acceptability of the occupants to a certain indoor environment (Giancola, Soutullo, Olmedo, & Heras, 2014). Over the years, the acceptability ranges regarding thermal comfort have been modified with the increase in both, the quality of life and the availability of resources and energy (Fabbri, 2015). In this way, indoor ambient conditions that were unreachable in the past, can now be achieved through building design techniques, air-conditioning equipment or a combination of both. Unfortunately, the attempts to improve indoor environmental conditions have increased the energy consumption of the building sector worldwide. In fact, the building sector is responsible for approximately 40% of the world's primary energy consumption (Kolokotsa, Rovas, Kosmatopoulos, & Kalaitzakis, 2011). For this reason, in the last decades, several efforts have been made to reduce building energy consumption by the use of more efficient air-conditioning equipment or through design improvements in buildings (building fabrics, WWR, shading devices, etc.) (Sadineni, Madala, & Boehm, 2011). Several of these constructive improvements are even regulations in certain countries and cities. These improvements, known as energy efficiency measures in buildings, allow reducing the energy consumption of buildings without compromising the thermal comfort of the occupants (Heo & Zavala, 2012). One example of the efforts done on the improvement on the building design and constructive techniques is the well-known zero-energy building, which aims to have zero (or nearly-zero) final energy consumption (Ferrante, 2012; Kapsalaki & Leal, 2011). However, most of the efforts have been focused on improving indoor environmental conditions in urban and developed regions, mainly located in high-latitude regions. Although there is still a huge door opened to research the improvement in design techniques in these regions (Butera, 2013), little research has been conducted on the thermal behaviour of buildings in equatorial regions.