Optimization of smart net-zero energy communities

净零能源(NZE)社区产生的可再生能源与它们在典型气象年的消耗量一样多。这与目前的建筑存量有很大不同，据估计，目前的建筑存量消耗了加拿大一次能源的31%和总发电量的50%左右。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，同时满足了对人类福祉和经济增长的期望，并有一个可衡量的目标。本研究计划提出了三个战略领域，以促进针对加拿大气候的成本效益NZE社区原型的工程设计。原型将足够强大，能够在电网中断和极端天气事件期间提供基本服务，并可能显著降低未来社区发展的初始工程和设计成本。该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。计算机模型使设计人员和开发人员能够在建设之前使用经济和能源性能指标来探索过多的节能策略。由此，可以确定最符合其特定设计目标的解决方案，并对其进行进一步改进。在这项提案中，建筑性能使用生命周期成本、碳和净能源消耗来量化。科学贡献包括开发、记录和验证模拟方法，这些方法概括了位于加拿大关键气候条件下的净零能源社区的能源和经济节约。该方法的新颖性在于其工业用途的重现性，专注于健壮的原型社区设计，以及使用能源、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促进NZE社区设计和运营知识，目标是在建筑和区域能源系统之间找到最佳的权衡。此外，这项研究探索了社会经济因素，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.