Conversion of University Commercial Buildings to Net-Zero Energy Buildings Employing Renewable Energy Sources

In this work, the feasibility of converting existing university buildings to Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) in presence of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) is investigated. Three buildings N54 (office), N44 (laboratory) and N24 (residential) are considered as the experimental candidates with different modes of operation and compared to the operating NZEB (N78). The N78 is considered as the baseline model to calculate the energy budget of the candidate buildings. Then, the calculated energy budget of candidate buildings provides the target to be achieved and the design variables to be considered consequently. After the analysis of the integrated performance of the candidate buildings compared to the baseline model (N78), the feasibility of the NZEBs is validated taking into account the energy performance, CO2 emission reduction, and economics of the buildings. The energy budget calculation done for the simulated results illustrates that the addition of the RESs into the operation of the building shows the highest feasibility of conversion to NZEB for building N24 and the lowest feasibility for building N44.No Full Tex