Search results for "Zero-energy building"
showing 10 items of 36 documents
Is the NZEB Benchmarking Approach Suitable for Assessing Energy Retrofit Design?
2013
Currently, many effort have been done to enable energy saving issues in building design and many definitions have been introduced for most performing constructions based on energy balance between energy demand and supply. Recently, the Net Zero Energy Building theory has bypassed old Passive House concept but many questions still remain open. Present work aims to estimate how NZEB requirements matching could be affected by the choice of their definition and the choice of weighting factor system, to be count in the energy balance. NZEB concept is mainly referred to new buildings design. Its application to existing buildings is for sure an hard task provided the architecture and physical cons…
Life cycle energy performances and environmental impacts of a prefabricated building module
2018
Abstract The paper explores the energy performances and environmental impacts of a prefabricated building module located in Messina (Sicily, Italy) through an approach that combines both the non-steady state building simulation and the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The building uses renewable energy technologies and is usable in emergency situations or as simply temporary housing. Results show that the building module causes the emission of 1.5 t of CO2eq/m2 and consumes 29.2 GJ/m2 of primary energy during its life cycle. The building achieves the Net Zero Energy Building target even if it has relevant environmental impacts in the materials production stage (72% on average of the total…
An innovative approach to manage uncertainties and stock diversity in the EPBD cost-optimal methodology
2018
The EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) 2010/31/EU is a step in the right direction to promote near zero energy buildings (NZEB) in a step-wise manner, starting with minimum energy performance and cost optimal thresholds for “reference buildings” (RBs) for each category. Nevertheless, a standard method for defining RBs does not exist, which led to a great divergence between MS in the level of detail used to define RBs for the EPBD cost-optimal analysis. Such lack of harmonisation between MS is further evident given the resulting large discrepancies in energy performance indicators even between countries having similar climate. Furthermore, discrepancies of 30% or higher betw…
An integrated energy simulation and life cycle assessment to measure the operational and embodied energy of a Mediterranean net zero energy building
2022
Abstract Net Zero Energy Buildings can play a key role in reducing the energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and the use of natural resources associated to the built environment. It is widely recognized that in low energy building a shift in relevance may occur from the operational to the embodied impacts. However, building performance assessment focus mostly on the operational phase and on primary energy consumption. This study aims to assess the energy and environmental impacts of a residential net zero energy building expanding the analysis to the full life cycle and to a wide range of environmental impact categories. The methodological approach integrates a non-steady state building ener…
Battery capacity estimation for building-integrated photovoltaic system: Design study of a Southern Norway ZEB house
2017
Building-integrated Photovoltaic system (BIPV) with energy storage (ES) can help in reducing the peak demand as well as overcoming the intermittency of the load and PV production. In Southern Norway, a Smart Village Skarpnes is developed for zero energy buildings (ZEBs). In this Smart Village, five houses are built with BIPV system. Its important to estimate the appropriate battery sizing with consideration of local PV production and load profile taking into account the battery characteristics with minimization of the annual electricity bill. In this study, real operational results of house (C6) from the Skarpnes Smart Village is used for estimating the capacity of battery energy storage fo…
Challenges in Energy Systems for the Smart-Cities of the Future
2012
In the last years the European Union has actively promoted the renewable energies and the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) also for residential and tertiary buildings. The exploitation of renewable sources and cogeneration seems hampered by the regulatory wall that prohibit for residential, tertiary and commercial buildings the constitution of users clusters. In fact, the unification up to a threshold value of some tens of kVA, at least, can facilitate the installation of renewable energy power plants as solar PV modules or CHP systems (cogeneration) or CCHP systems (tri-generation), overcoming technical and economical barriers and combining several load profiles. The actual distribution syste…
Demand side management and Distributed on Site actions benefits
2013
Global warming and energy demand are nowadays becoming one of the major issues of the third millennium, mainly because human activities seem to have a clear impact on the raise of CO2 emissions as never it has been experienced in the past. Among the different factors affecting CO2 emissions, energy demand from buildings constitutes one of the most important actors. Energy Management (EM) actions can reduce the energy consumption of the system and minimize peaks-level, by using a distributed control over every house. These local actions can greatly contribute to reduce the impact on the global CO2 emissions. An evaluation of the potential energy saving and CO2 emissions reduction on building…
A comparison of different DC-DC converters for energy storage management in nearly-Zero Energy Buildings
2020
In the recent years, there has been a notable interest towards renewable sources, energy saving and efficiency optimization, in order to reduce the damages brought by fine dust and greenhouse gases in terms of safety, health and environmental protection. In the building sector renewable sources and energy efficiency optimization are leading to a large scale employment of nearly-Zero Energy Buildings (n-ZEBs), meaning that the balance between produced and required energy is negligible. For a proper n-ZEB implementation, a power system architecture has to be accurately designed, according to the existing renewable sources, loads and storage systems. In this paper, an investigation on differen…
The Evaluation of Energy Performances of a Net Zero Energy Building: An Italian Case Study
2010
Over the past decades the impact of construction on the primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions has highlighted [1]. The interest of the international scientific community has therefore focused on the concept of a Net Zero Energy Solar Building (NZESB), which is generally defined as a building that produces all primary energy it needs during a year [2]. Among the many research activities focused on these buildings, it should be mentioned the case study developed within the IEA SHC Task 40/ECBS Annex 52 "Towards Net Zero Energy Solar Buildings". The paper shows a case study of a Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) located in Ancona (Italy):“Life Energy And Future (Leaf) House” (L…
Different energy balances for the redesign of nearly net zero energy buildings: An Italian case study
2015
Abstract The currently developing concept of a Net Zero Energy Building introduces new challenges and research problems. The calculation of a net zero energy balance is heavily influenced by the energy carrier weighting factors that are chosen, which can deeply influence the future energy market towards adopting specific energy technologies. The following paper proposes an analysis of different definitions and conventions for Net Zero Energy Buildings that employ different calculation methodologies and apply different weighting factors to an Italian case study. The case study, which is called “the Leaf House”, is one of the first examples of a nearly net zero energy building in Italy. A bui…