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Energy Evaluation and Energy-Savings for Sustainable Buildings

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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "G: Energy and Buildings".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (23 May 2023) | Viewed by 7574

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Somayeh Asadi

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Guest Editor

Department of Architectural Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Interests: design of energy efficient buildings; smart grid; food–water–energy nexus; integrate advanced–sustainable materials and nanomaterials; life cycle assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Energy consumption in buildings accounts for a significant ratio of the energy supply worldwide, and it is anticipated to rise much further. Buildings use 40% of primary energy and 76% of electricity in the United States, according to statistics reported on building energy consumption. The home and business sectors use around 30% of the energy in the world. Additionally, the IEO2013 Reference scenario predicts a 57% increase in worldwide home energy use between 2010 and 2040. Energy demands are anticipated to significantly increase as industry grows and living standards improve. Significant efforts have been undertaken recently to increase energy saving/efficiency in both developed and developing nations in order to address these challenges. The proposed research topic of the current Special Issue concentrates on the energy evaluation and energy-saving methodologies in buildings in future energy grids, including but not limited to energy-efficient design strategies for buildings, economic evaluation of energy saving in buildings, evaluation of energy performance indicators in buildings, energy-saving measures in buildings, net-zero and zero-energy buildings and energy efficiency solutions, sustainable and green buildings, design of low-energy buildings, energy-flexible buildings, and energy management methodologies in buildings.

Dr. Somayeh Asadi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

sustainable buildings
zero-energy buildings
energy saving
energy efficiency
energy management

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 942 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A New Design for the Peer-to-Peer Electricity and Gas Markets Based on Robust Probabilistic Programming

by Seyed Amin Sedgh, Hossein Aghamohammadloo, Hassan Khazaei, Mehdi Mehdinejad and Somayeh Asadi

Energies 2023, 16(8), 3464; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16083464 - 14 Apr 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1038

Abstract

This paper presents a fully-decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) electricity and gas market for retailers and prosumers with coupled energy units, considering the uncertainties of wholesale electricity market price and prosumers’ demand. The goal is to improve the overall economy of the proposed market while increasing its flexibility. In this market, the retailers are equipped with self-generation and energy storage units and can bilaterally negotiate for electricity and gas transactions with prosumers to maximize their profit. Furthermore, they can sell power to the upstream market in addition to prosumers. The prosumers have access to several retailers to supply their required electricity and gas and can freely provide their energy needs from every retailer, contributing to dynamicity in the proposed market. Given that they have an energy hub consisting of boiler units, combined heat and electricity (CHP) units, and electric pumps, they can switch their energy supply source from electricity to gas and vice versa. A robust possibilistic programming approach is applied to address the uncertainties. A fully-decentralized approach called the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is utilized to solve the presented decentralized robust problem. The proposed decentralized algorithm finds an optimum solution by establishing a smart balance between the average expected value, optimality robustness, and feasibility robustness. The feasibility and competitiveness of the proposed approach are evaluated through numerical studies on a distribution system with two retailers and three prosumers. The data analysis of the simulation results verifies the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized robust framework as well as the proposed decentralized solution. According to the maximum deviation, the expected optimal value in the robust case, the retailer’s profit has decreased by 12.1 percent, and the prosumers’ cost has increased by 27.4 percent due to the feasibility penalty term. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Evaluation and Energy-Savings for Sustainable Buildings)

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28 pages, 4455 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Benchmarking of Energy Consumption in Higher Education Buildings in Saudi Arabia to Be Sustainable: Sulaiman Al-Rajhi University Case

by Faouzan Abdulaziz Alfaoyzan and Radwan A. Almasri

Energies 2023, 16(3), 1204; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16031204 - 22 Jan 2023

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3125

Abstract

Electricity is used in educational buildings, and there are now numerous attempts to reduce consumption, achieve sustainability, and protect the environment. This paper aims to study energy consumption, identify opportunities to rationalize energy consumption, and propose solutions at Sulaiman Al-Rajhi University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order for the university campus to become sustainable. The results showed that total annual electrical consumption totaled 13,859 MWh in 2021. The air conditioning system, other devices, and lighting have the percentage of consumption 79, 14, and 7% of the total, respectively. Electricity consumption intensity was approximately 145–155 kWh/m², and the per capita intensity was approximately 12,987–16,351 kWh, in the period 2017–2021. The price of the electrical energy generated on the university campus ranged between 0.3 and 0.53 SR/kWh in 2021, while the electricity tariff from the grid for educational buildings was 0.18 SR/kWh. This means that the public grid was 50% cheaper than campus-generated electricity. At the price of energy generated by generators, the total simple payback time (SPBT) for the suggested energy conservation measures (ECMs) is 4.13 years, whereas the SPBT is 8.96 in the case of the consumption of the electricity supplied by the national grid. The environmental benefits of the proposed ECMs were also identified. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Evaluation and Energy-Savings for Sustainable Buildings)

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14 pages, 3682 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Load Prediction Algorithm Applied with Indoor Environment Sensing in University Buildings

by Yunho Kim, Yunha Park, Hyuncheol Seo and Jungha Hwang

Energies 2023, 16(2), 999; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16020999 - 16 Jan 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1517

Abstract

Recently, building automation system (BAS) and building energy management system (BEMS) technologies have been applied to efficiently reduce the energy consumption of buildings. In addition, studies on utilizing large quantities of building data have been actively conducted using artificial intelligence and machine learning. However, the high cost and installation difficulties limit the use of measuring devices to sense the indoor environment of all buildings. Therefore, this study developed a comprehensive indoor environment sensor module with relatively inexpensive sensors to measure the indoor environment of a university building. In addition, an algorithm for predicting the load in real time through machine learning based on indoor environment measurement is proposed. When the reliability of the algorithm for predicting the number of occupants and load according to the indoor CO₂ concentration was quantitatively assessed, the mean squared error (MSE), root mean square deviation (RMSD), and mean absolute error (MAE) were calculated to be 23.1, 4.8, and 2.5, respectively, indicating the high accuracy of the algorithm. Since the sensor used in this study is economical and can be easily applied to existing buildings, it is expected to be favorable for the dissemination of load prediction technology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Evaluation and Energy-Savings for Sustainable Buildings)

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Review

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19 pages, 2294 KiB

Open AccessReview

Indirect Effects of High-Performance Buildings at Household and Community Level: A Systematic Literature Review

by Lorenza Pistore, Francesca Tintinaglia, Roberta Pernetti, Pietro Stivanello and Wilmer Pasut

Energies 2023, 16(5), 2499; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16052499 - 06 Mar 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1557

Abstract

Towards a carbon-neutral society, the building sector has a pivotal role with still a great potential for improvement. A new generation of buildings is rising but, to set a more ambitious shift in the paradigm and to fully justify the additional efforts (technological and economic) needed to fill the gap between net zero and plus energy performances, it is essential to consider not only the direct effects, but also all the indirect impacts. However, research conducted in the last decade solely focuses on the direct effects, mainly energy savings, while the indirect impacts neither have a clear identity nor terminology and a defined list of the impacts and methodologies for their quantification is still missing. With these premises, a systematic literature review on the current state of the art was performed in this work, with the aim of (i) investigating the heterogeneous terminology used for such indirect effects, (ii) identifying a final potential list of impacts both at the household and at the community level and (iii) their macro-categorizations, and (iv) exploring the current implemented methodologies and indicators for an economic quantification. As a final result of the analysis, the authors propose a unique terminology for addressing the indirect effects of high-performance buildings. This paper sets the needed basis and common ground for future research in this field, meant to economically quantify the indirect effects in the building sector. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Evaluation and Energy-Savings for Sustainable Buildings)

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