TOWARDS NET ZERO ENERGY BUILDINGS: DYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF AN OFFICE BUILDING IN THREE CLIMATE ZONES OF EUROPE

摘要

With the increasing trend toward energy efficient andnearly or net zero energy buildings, there is a need for aholistic approach to optimize building energyperformance parameters. The objective of this paper is todefine the heating, cooling, and electricity demand of acommercial office building in three different climateregions: Northern Europe - Finland, Central Europe -United Kingdom, and Southern Europe - Romania.Dynamic simulations were performed using the buildingperformance simulation programme IDA Indoor Climateand Energy (IDA ICE) for three energy efficiency levels.To define the optimal solution for each climate zone,three cases for each were defined: (a) Business as usualcase as a base case where the input values are takendirectly from the existing country regulations; (b) Energyefficient case; and (c) Zero energy case, where the inputvalues are obtained by expert knowledge supported withapproximately 50 optimised rounds of dynamicsimulations. Thus, the primary focus of this research is toreduce an office building’s annual energy consumptiondemand through effective utilization of energy efficientsystem solutions and concepts. Future research effortswill use the results obtained in this study to set systemlevel parameters, coupled with renewable energy sourcesfor on-site energy production, to achieve energy balanceover an annual cycle.