Zero Energy Project In Home Construction: An Overview

Low Carbon Construction Materials

Discuss about the Zero Energy Project In Home Construction.

The zero-energy building is the total amount of energy which has been used by the building based on the amount of renewable energy. This tends to contribute towards the less overall greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. The net zero energy has been mainly about the energy which is for the operations that handles the consumption related to daily energy with maintenance. Along with this, all the energy related to the wastes and the disposals is evaluated for the on-site supply. (Attia et al., 2013). This also means that big savings for the bigger profit and buyers for the construction business. The concept of zero energy project also has many resources for the cost effective zero energy home in building as well as in design.

The low carbon bricks, green concrete, green tile and the recycled metals are some of the possible materials for the low carbon construction. The low carbon buildings have been mainly for reducing the emissions of the GHG (Green House Gas) which is mainly released at the time of construction, operation, renovation and the deconstruction process. Hence, the materials which are required for the manufacturing needs to be properly used with recycling the same, reducing the material quantity. The usage of the solar, wind, low impact hydro is some of the measures which could be able to reduce the emissions of GHG. A proper development and usage of the green power, carbon offsets and the GHG reductions help in measuring and handling the reports to reduce the building emissions with adopting the strategies which are effective. To accomplish the effective use of energy along with zero energy design completely departs in significant manner from traditional construction practice. (da Graça et al., 2012).

There is sophisticated 3D based building energy focus on the low carbon bricks with the rolling out for the mass production where the fly ash is a fine glass powder which consists of silica, iron and alumina. The green concrete is to form the conventional concrete that has been mainly set with the different by-products. (Deng et al., 2014). They are substituted with the aggregates of the washed copper slag, granite by the recycling with demolished debris. There is a proper recycling of the metals with production process that is highly carbon intensive. The life cycle performance of metal products could be set to reduce the production energy with working over maintaining the properties. The utilisation of the metal products without completely recycling helps in re-moulding to the different and new products like the columns of the steel or any beam.

Innovative Construction Process

The innovative construction process could be through minimising the material which is used for the construction with completely recycling and reusing the product. This is set with effectiveness and working towards the use of the renewable energy. Some of the innovation could be in the grid optimisation, storage of energy and working over the connections where the electricity is produced from the natural gas or the electric standards. They are for the on-site energy generation which tends to exceed the building energy requirements where there has been excess of the production offsets with excess demands that results in the net energy consumption which is 0.

Since almost 41% percent of energy used in US is for the buildings, if net zero energy building become utterly ubiquitous, there will be a major decrease in US consumption of fossil fuel & energy (Doiron et al., 2011).  The use of the designs like the high-performance envelopes, air barrier systems, daylighting, sun controlling and shading devices. A proper evaluation needs to be for the passive solar heating and the natural ventilation as well. This will further immensely reduce the environmental damage and assist in reducing the greenhouse based gas emissions. To ensure people completely acknowledge the threat associated with climate and therefore the importance of net zero energy construction comes into picture.

It is important to focus on the non-domestic buildings which account for the carbon dioxide emissions. Here, the consumption could be from housing both the energy supply and the household demand for energy. This could be managed through the energy efficiency which is affected by building an envelope and appliances along with installing the heating and cooling systems. The effective management of the energy systems and the appliances operate in home with the decarbonisation of the energy supply. This is important for the for the generation and storage options. The smart grids effectively take hold of the small-scale generators into the network. The housing energy performance works over the number of factors which include the airtightness of shell, insulative capacity of the shell, thermal bridging, heating and cooling of the systems. For passive house, a building need to focus on the different conditions like the designing and the material. The total primary energy consumption for heating, hot water and electricity should be more than 120Kwh/m2 (Kapsalaki and Leal, 2011).

The central heating, ventilation and the air conditions system (HVAC) is considered to be used in the large buildings with the major impact on the space heating, cooling and the ventilation demands. This is set to achieve the higher energy performance with time sensitivity to the building heating and cooling the energy needs. The energy evaluation methodology is based on quantifying and working over the assess of effectiveness and economic benefits. This will help in setting the barriers to the energy savings as well.

Management of Operative Energy Consumption and Consumption Behaviour

The solar photovoltaic is considered the clean and the cost competitive energy source which is considered important for the PV panels. This also require a lesser maintenance where the technology is attractive with costs of PV systems that tends to decrease in the recent times. They are also for building and occupy the unused rooftop areas. The use of the car parking space is set with producing the energy with proper protection to the cars and the individuals. Here, PV installation is to integrate the building architecture with building integrated photovoltaics. They are depending upon how the system will be able to cover the energy needs of the building. This also includes the different technical potential which cover 50% of the rooftops with photovoltaics.  (Leckner and Zmeureanu, 2011).

Moreover, the concept of daylighting along with skylights can further provide hundred percent of daytime illumination within the parameters of home. Night-time illumination is normally done with LED based lighting that uses almost one third or even less power than any incandescent lights without adding any unwanted level of heat (Torcellini, et al., 2006).

The main of the concept is sustainable construction along with green building and sustainable architecture which is used with resources in a more effective manner and also reduce the building negative influence on the culture. (Marszal et al., 2011). There are some of the unique things which could be recycled or reused like the wooden wall panel, stackable chairs, doors, shelving and the green roof plants. The main goal is to incorporate the sustainability through the lifecycle of renovation with the reduced carbon footprint to achieve the net zero energy goal. The renovation in the building will be also for the promotion of best practices in sustainability and creative recycling. (Thomas and Duffy, 2013). With the renewable, onsite thermal energy, there are some effective use of biomass and the other similar products which could be used for the space heating, service water heating etc.

The zero-waste landfill is about the diversion of the waste from the disposal for the landfill. The business is about the handling the waste with reducing the material consumption and waste with proper reusing of the materials, recycling, compositing and using the different anaerobic digestion. This will facilitate a proper designing and managing of the products and processes in an effective manner.

Conclusion

The concept of net zero energy performance along in high performance homes take help from a number and kind of materials as well as construction practices which is not found in the traditional form of construction. The designers as well as the architects may or may not discuss specific energy based details or can further neglect to make specific decision associated with the energy based performance strategies at the time of design phase and the outcome is with the added costs for the builders (Voss et al., 2011). For gaining success in zero energy projects, the designers and architects together with construction team must get familiar with all the steps to cost effective zero energy home construction and pay special significance to design strategies along with discussing them in detail on the design plans as required.

References

Attia, S., Hamdy, M., O’Brien, W. and Carlucci, S., 2013. Assessing gaps and needs for integrating building performance optimization tools in net zero energy buildings design. Energy and Buildings, 60, pp.110-124.

da Graça, G.C., Augusto, A. and Lerer, M.M., 2012. Solar powered net zero energy houses for southern Europe: Feasibility study. Solar Energy, 86(1), pp.634-646.

Deng, S., Wang, R.Z. and Dai, Y.J., 2014. How to evaluate performance of net zero energy building–A literature research. Energy, 71, pp.1-16.

Doiron, M., O’Brien, P.E.W., Athienitis, A. and Eng, P., 2011. Energy performance, comfort and lessons learned from a near net-zero energy solar house. ASHRAE Transactions, 117(2), pp.1-12.

Kapsalaki, M. and Leal, V., 2011. Recent progress on net zero energy buildings. Advances in Building Energy Research, 5(1), pp.129-162.

Kolokotsa, D.E.K.D., Rovas, D., Kosmatopoulos, E. and Kalaitzakis, K., 2011. A roadmap towards intelligent net zero-and positive-energy buildings. Solar Energy, 85(12), pp.3067-3084.

Leckner, M. and Zmeureanu, R., 2011. Life cycle cost and energy analysis of a Net Zero Energy House with solar combisystem. Applied Energy, 88(1), pp.232-241.

Marszal, A.J., Heiselberg, P., Bourrelle, J.S., Musall, E., Voss, K., Sartori, I. and Napolitano, A., 2011. Zero Energy Building–A review of definitions and calculation methodologies. Energy and buildings, 43(4), pp.971-979.

Thomas, W.D. and Duffy, J.J., 2013. Energy performance of net-zero and near net-zero energy homes in New England. Energy and Buildings, 67, pp.551-558.

Torcellini, P., Pless, S., Deru, M. and Crawley, D., 2006. Zero energy buildings: a critical look at the definition. National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Department of Energy, US.

Voss, K., Musall, E. and Lichtmeß, M., 2011. From low-energy to Net Zero-Energy Buildings: status and perspectives. Journal of Green building, 6(1), pp.46-57.