Abstract
Targeting existing residential buildings for retrofit improvement presents significant prospects for global reduction of energy-usage and carbon footprints. Energy consumption of the existing single-family building in the hot-humid climate zone needs to be targeted for improvement due to their potential energy-savings and sizeable market share. This paper proposes and evaluates energy savings and cost-effectiveness of a whole building retrofit package for single-family residential buildings built between 1950 and 1970. The study outlined a survey conducted using the clustering data mining technique on Florida Single-Family Residential (SFR) homes to determine the essence of the building envelope, patterns of construction, and Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems. The evaluation of the energy efficiency measures (EEMs) effectiveness is performed utilizing Autodesk Revit and a Six-Step modeled framework. This framework consists of baseline model development, validation of the model with an actual case study building, identification of potential EMMs, evaluation of EEMs individually and incorporating the selected EMMs into retrofit package and maximizing the energy-saving and cost-effectiveness of the proposed retrofit package. The study develops proposed retrofit improvement package detailing replacement & improvement EEMs, implementation cost, annual energy savings (kWh), cost-saving ($), and payback period (years) for each individual EEM as well as the combined/total energy improvement package. The paper further explored the usage of solar photovoltaics (PV) energy generation options to offset the remaining energy-use after the implementation of the proposed retrofit package.
Highlights
The growing concerns about climate change and continuous rise in energy cost have prompted public interest in energy efficiency and conservation measures
Residential buildings utilize 22% of total consumption in the United States from which Single-Family residential buildings are responsible for 80% total energy consumed, multi-family buildings consumed
The methodology for this research adopted an approach that includes an extensive study targeted at improving the energy performance of existing single-family residential buildings in the state of Florida, which applies to other hot-humid climate zones
Summary
The growing concerns about climate change and continuous rise in energy cost have prompted public interest in energy efficiency and conservation measures. Authority (EIA) [1], the total energy consumption in the United States for both residential and commercial sectors contributed about 40% (or about 40 quadrillion British thermal units) in 2018. The diversity of energy consumption across the United States is as a result of the different home types, sizes, structures, and climate zones [2]. A survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau 2013 [3] found that more than 60% of the United States’ housing stock is 30 years old and energy inefficient and consumes more energy compared to new buildings [3]. There is a need to address the existing residential building stocks to reduce the Energies 2020, 13, 1178; doi:10.3390/en13051178 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
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