Optimization of smart net-zero energy communities

净零能源（NZE）社区产生的可再生能源与他们在一个典型的气象年消耗的能源一样多。这与目前的建筑存量有很大的不同，据估计，目前的建筑存量使用了加拿大31%的一次能源和约50%的总发电量。NZE社区满足了降低能源使用强度、整合清洁能源供应和减轻新建和现有建筑对环境影响的战略需求，同时以可衡量的目标满足对人类福祉和经济增长的期望。 该研究计划提出了三个战略领域，以促进符合加拿大气候条件的具有成本效益的NZE社区原型的工程设计。原型将足够强大，在电网中断和极端天气事件期间提供基本服务，并可能大大降低未来社区发展的初始工程和设计成本。这种科学方法结合了建筑性能模拟、优化算法、能量存储和机器学习。 计算机模型使设计师和开发人员能够在施工前使用经济和能源性能指标探索大量的节能策略。由此，可以确定并进一步改进最符合其特定设计目标的解决方案。在该提案中，使用生命周期成本、碳和净能源消耗来量化建筑性能。 科学贡献包括开发、记录和验证建模方法，这些方法涵盖了位于加拿大主要气候地区的净零能源社区的能源和经济节约。该方法的新奇在于其可重复性，可用于工业用途，专注于稳健的原型社区设计，并使用能源，碳和经济指标对建筑和区域系统进行整体评估。 该研究计划通过提出综合建模方法来推进NZE社区设计和运营知识，目标是找到建筑和地区能源系统之间的最佳权衡。此外，该研究还探讨了社会经济因素，并可能有助于为未来的能源政策提供信息，并制定有效的激励计划，以进一步推动NZE的建设和社区采用。

Net-zero energy (NZE) communities generate as much renewable energy as they consume over a typical meteorological year. This is a significant departure from the present building stock which is estimated to use 31% of primary energy and about 50% of total electricity produced in Canada. NZE communities satisfy a strategic need to reduce energy use intensity, integrate clean energy supplies and mitigate environmental impacts of the new and existing building stock, all while meeting expectations for human well-being and economic growth with a measurable goal. This research program proposes three strategic areas to facilitate the engineering design of cost-effective NZE community archetypes for Canadian climates. Archetypes will be sufficiently robust to provide essential services during grid-outages and extreme weather events and may significantly reduce initial engineering and design costs of future community developments. The scientific approach combines building performance simulation, optimization algorithms, energy storage and machine learning. Computer models enable designers and developers to explore a plethora of energy saving strategies using economic and energy performance metrics before construction. From this, solutions which best meet their particular design goals can be identified and further refined. In this proposal, building performance is quantified using life-cycle cost, carbon and net-energy consumption. The scientific contributions include the development, documentation and validation of modelling methodologies which encapsulate the energy and economic savings of net-zero energy communities located in key Canadian climates. The novelty of the methodology is its reproducibility for industry use, focus on robust archetypal community designs, and holistic appraisal of both building and district systems using energy, carbon and economic indicators. The research program advances NZE community design and operational knowledge by proposing integrative modelling approaches with the goal of finding optimal trade-offs between building and district energy systems. In addition, the research explores socio-economic factors and may aid in informing future energy policy and development of effective incentive programs to further advance NZE building and community adoption.