Designing and Optimization of Net-Zero Energy Buildings and Communities
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Building".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 7008
Special Issue Editor
Interests: energy sustainability; designing and optimization of thermal systems; computational heat transfer
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Buildings are known as one of the world’s largest energy end-user sectors. Moving towards a sustainable future requires the development of a path for transitioning to net zero energy buildings (NZEB). NZEBs are highly energy efficient buildings that can generate their own energy needs. From a building’s architecture, materials and envelope to energy end-users including lighting, HVAC, plug loads, water heating and others must be properly selected, designed and optimized to yield the minimum energy consumption for a given climate zone and type of building. The design and integration of onsite renewable energy generation and storage must also be carefully addressed. Additionally, with the development of emerging concepts such as net-zero energy communities (NZEC), further studies in these areas are underway. A net zero-energy community (ZEC) features a significantly reduced energy need which is being covered by renewable sources. The purpose of this Special Issue is to collect research articles with a focus on the design and optimization of net-zero energy buildings (NZEB) and communities (NZEC). A special (but not exclusive) focus will be put on the following topics:
- Net zero energy design and optimization for new buildings and retrofit projects
- Analysis of energy, environmental, economic and social aspects of NZEB and NZEC for different types of buildings and climate zones
- Grid interactive NZEB and connected communities
- Modelling and optimization methods for NZEB and NZEC
- Practical challenges in development of NZEB and NZEC
- Experience from construction, system integration, operation, maintenance and monitoring of NZEB and NZEC
Dr. Hamidreza Najafi
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- net-zero energy building (NZEB)
- net-zero energy community (NZEC)
- design
- optimization
- efficiency
- sustainability
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