SERBIAN ZNEB AND PNEB - OPTIMIZATION OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Abstract

Today, significant part of the total energy consumption is related to the building, so research and development of methods for improving energy efficiency in buildings are very important. In this paper it is investigated the Serbian residential building with photovoltaic panels and solar collectors on the roof in order to achieve the concept of ZNEB (zero net energy building) and PNEB (positive net energy building). The building with district space heating is analyzed. Energy optimization (including embodied energy) was performed with the major aim to determine the optimal area of the PV array and solar collector area on the roof. The residential buildings with variable thermal insulation thickness, variable electric energy consumption and variable domestic hot water consumption are investigated. The buildings are simulated in EnergyPlus environment. Open Studio plug-in in Google SketchUp was used for buildings design, Hooke-Jeeves algorithm for optimization and GENOPT software for software execution control. The obtained results gave the optimal size of PV array and solar collectors system. With these optimal sizes, the concept ZNEB and PNEB can be achieved.