Towards Net Positive and Nearly Zero Carbon Residential Neighborhoods
Date
2021-07-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) estimated that residential buildings consume 16.6% of the total energy and are responsible for producing 12.7% of greenhouse gas emissions. The presented research aims to enhance the high-performance solar neighborhood’s design process to achieve overall net-zero energy status, reduce the energy, and carbon footprint. The solar neighborhoods are designed by maximizing energy production from BIPV systems and minimizing building energy consumption. The building energy consumption is optimized by implementing the latest energy efficiency measures such as highly energy-efficient appliances, heating, domestic hot water (DHW), and lighting systems within each residential unit. The main contribution of the presented study entails developing a holistic and scalable methodology for the design and analysis of high-performance residential units and neighborhoods, with the potential of attaining net-positive energy and nearly zero carbon status. The backbone of scalable neighborhood design methodology is the automation framework. The automation framework develops a complete neighborhood design from a single residential building. The developed comprehensive methodology was implemented for simulating 252 neighborhood designs in EnergyPlus. These neighborhood designs were created from three building scale scenarios (one reference case and two NZEBs), twelve site layouts and seven building shapes. Initially, a reference case was designed as per Alberta Building Codes, and then it was optimized for achieving NZE status. Amongst ten such high-performance residential units, two NZEBs were selected based on a developed criterion. The results revealed that optimization at the building level could reduce the impact of site layout by 46.2 – 51.4% and building shape can negatively affect net-positive energy (NPE) status by 8-10%. The best neighborhood design achieved a 13.9% net-positive energy status and diminished carbon emissions by 95%.
Description
Keywords
Automation framework, neighborhood scale design, building energy performance, EnergyPlus, simulation
Citation
Jassal, A. P. S. (2021). Towards Net Positive and Nearly Zero Carbon Residential Neighborhoods (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.