Towards Energy-Positive Buildings through a Quality-Matched Energy Flow Strategy

Abstract

Current strategies for net-zero buildings favor envelopes with minimized aperture ratios and limiting of solar gains through reduced glazing transmittance and emissivity. This load-reduction approach precludes strategies that maximize on-site collection of solar energy, which could increase opportunities for net-zero electricity projects. To better leverage solar resources, a whole-building strategy is proposed, referred to as “Quality-Matched Energy Flows” (or Q-MEF): capturing, transforming, buffering, and transferring irradiance on a building’s envelope—and energy derived from it—into distributed end-uses. A mid-scale commercial building was modeled in three climates with a novel Building-Integrated, Transparent, Concentrating Photovoltaic and Thermal fenestration technology (BITCoPT), thermal storage and circulation at three temperature ranges, adsorption chillers, and auxiliary heat pumps. BITCoPT generated electricity and collected thermal energy at high efficiencies while transmitting diffuse light and mitigating excess gains and illuminance. The balance of systems satisfied cooling and heating demands. Relative to baselines with similar glazing ratios, net electricity use decreased 71% in a continental climate and 100% or more in hot-arid and subtropical-moderate climates. Total EUI decreased 35%, 83%, and 52%, and peak purchased electrical demands decreased up to 6%, 32%, and 20%, respectively (with no provisions for on-site electrical storage). Decreases in utility services costs were also noted. These results suggest that with further development of electrification the Q-MEF strategy could contribute to energy-positive behavior for projects with similar typology and climate profiles.

Building Material and the Climate: Constructing a New Future

“…> Far more research and development is needed to adapt glass façades to capture solar energy for use in heating, cooling, lighting and electrical loads in the building interior (see Figure 5.14). Glass is key to the future on-site solar collection technologies that can enable net zero buildings (Novelli et al 2022).…”

Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES)

“…Arguably the greatest opportunities for energy efficiency benefits still pertain to the building sector, due to their large share of total energy consumption. As such, this was the focus of Novelli et al in the sixth contribution to this Special Issue [9]. More specifically, they simulated a medium-scale commercial office building according to the Quality-Matched Energy Flows framework, with positive implications for lighting demands, cooling, and heating loads, peak demands, net energy use, operational costs, and design considerations.…”