Economic Performance of Net-Zero Energy Community under Reward-Penalty Mechanism Considering PV System Reliability

Abstract

Economic performance of net-zero energy building/community (ZEB/ZEC) is an important factor that affects potential investors’ decision on installing renewable energy systems (RES). A reward-penalty mechanism (RPM) is proposed for accelerating the development of zero energy communities, which is developed without considering the reliability effect from RES generation. However, an investigation is deserved for the reliability effect of RES on building economic performance. A case study is therefore conducted based on an assumed community consisting of 20 family houses, in which the electricity load was collected by the smart meter for more than one year. The results show that the proposed RPM works efficiently under an ideal condition, while the costs of the community and its buildings are greatly increased when the effect of PV system reliability is considered. Specifically, the total cost of the community under 1.0ZEC design is 5 005 USD/yr in the first year, which increases to 11 341 USD/yr in the 25th year. By contrast, the total cost of the community under 1.2ZEC design is 5 243 USD/yr in the first year and increases to 9 607 USD/yr in the 25th year. It is believed that the results of this study can provide a progressive perspective for scheme makers and building owners in terms of its economic benefit. Development of enhanced RPM by considering system reliability will be investigated in our future work.

Sustainable Living Unveiled: A Comprehensive Review of Key Studies on Zero Energy Homes

“…A total of 68 sources were meticulously curated, with detailed records of titles, links, and succinct summaries for each source. To streamline the subsequent writing process, these sources were systematically organized into distinct categories, encompassing HVAC Systems and Air Quality ( Zeiler et al, 2016;Minea et al, 2017), Photovoltaic Systems (Stadle et al, 2011Hoseinzadeh et al, 2019), (Liu et al, 2023), (Lu et al, 2019), (Radulovic et al, 2020). Modern Homes (Max et al, 2021;Farhar & Coburn, 2008), .…”

“…Modern Homes (Max et al, 2021;Farhar & Coburn, 2008), . Zero Net Energy Homes (Liu et al, 2015;Heendeniya et al, 2020), Regional ZNEB projects (Olsthoorn et al, 2019), (Hu & Qiu, 2019), Policy (Lu et al, 2019;Arent et al, 2020), andMiscellaneous (Güğül &Bora, 2022); (Kaupa, 2022); ( Zeiler et al, 2016); (Minea et al, 2017).…”

Integrated and smart design for buildings and communities

“…Both existing areas [25,37,55,56,42,47,[49][50][51][52][53][54], as well as new developments [48,49,65,66,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64], have been studied for their potential to become zero energy. The size can vary from a few residential buildings, to tens, hundreds or more than thousand, in areas with urban or suburban character and in a few cases rural areas.…”

“…A few researchers consider a holistic approach to the energy balance of the district, introducing all types of energy uses in the discussion (buildings, transportation, industry, public spaces) [6,25,44,45,50,51]. Most studies investigate zero energy communities focusing on the building-related energy component, either comprising various types of buildings [52,54,[57][58][59]64,[66][67][68], or only residential [37,42,65,69,[47][48][49]55,56,60,62,63].…”

“…In terms of costs, Lu et al performed an investigation of the economic performance of a net zero energy community with PV installation under a reward-penalty mechanism, the mechanism favored the higher levels of RES inclusion towards the achievement of the net zero energy status [55]. Kalaycıoğlu and Yılmaz implemented the EU cost-optimal methodology to study the cost-optimal solutions for zero energy districts.…”