Analyzing Traditional Architectural Solutions in Reducing Energy Consumption (Residential Design in Mashhad Climate)

The rapid pace of urbanization has an impact on climate change and other environmental issues. Currently, 54% of the global population lives in cities accounting for two-thirds of global energy demand. Sustainable energy generation and consumption is the top humanity’s problem for the next 50 years. Faced with rising urban population and the need to achieve energy efficiency, urban planners are focusing on sustainable, smart energy systems. This has led to the development of Smart Grids (SG) that employs intelligent monitoring, control and communication technologies to enhance efficiency, reliability and sustainability of power generation and distribution networks. While energy utilities are optimizing energy generation and distribution, consumers play a key role in sustainable energy usage. Several energy services are provided to the consumers to know households' hourly energy consumption, estimate monthly electricity cost and recommendations to reduce energy consumption. Furthermore, advanced services such as demand response, can now control and influence energy demand at the consumer-end to reduce the overall peak demand and re-shape demand profiles. The effectiveness and adoption of these services highly depend on the consumers’ awareness, their participation and engagement. Current energy services seldomly consider consumer preferences such as their daily behavior, comfort level and energy-consumption pattern. In this thesis, we investigate development of personalized energy services that strive to achieve a balance between efficient-energy consumption and user comfort. Personalization refers to tailoring energy services based on individual consumers’ characteristics, preferences and behavior. To develop effective personalized energy services a set of challenges need to be tackled. First, fine-grained data collection at user and appliance level is required (data collection challenge). Mechanisms should be devised to collect fine-grained data at various levels in a non-intrusive way with minimal sensors. Second, personalized energy services require detailed user preferences such as their thermal comfort level, appliance usage behavior and daily habits (user preference challenge). Accurate learning models to derive user preferences with minimal training and intrusion are required. Third, energy services developed needs to be easily scalable, from one household to tens and thousands of households (scalability challenge). Mechanisms should be developed to tackle the deluge of data and support distributed storage and processing. Fourth, energy services should deliver real-time feedback or recommendations so that users can promptly act upon it (real time challenge). This calls for development of distributed and low complexity algorithms. This thesis moves away from traditional SG services -- which hardly consider consumer preferences and comfort -- and proposes a novel approach to develop effective personalized energy services. The proposed energy services provide actionable feedback, raise awareness and promote energy-saving behavior among consumers. In this thesis, we follow a bottom-up data-driven methodology to develop personalized energy services at various scales -- (i) nano: individual households, (ii) micro: buildings and spaces, and (iii) macro: neighborhoods and cities. To this end, we present our approach -- physical analytics for sustainable, smart energy systems -- that combines IoT data, physical modeling and data analytics to develop intelligent, personalized energy services. Physical analytics fuses data from various Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as smart meters, smart phones and smart watches, along with physical information such as household type, demographics and occupancy to infer energy-usage patterns, user behavior and discover hidden patterns. This approach is used to learn and model user preferences and energy usage, subsequently, employed to develop personalized energy services. This thesis is organized into three parts. Part I describes how to derive fine-grained information with minimal sensors and intrusion. We present two novel algorithms viz., LocED and PEAT that derive fine-grained information from appliance and user level, respectively. This real-time information is used to raise awareness on energy-usage behavior among occupants. Part II presents personalized energy services targeted at households and buildings. We develop services that shift and/or reduce energy consumption and cost by considering individual consumers’ preferences and comfort. These energy services are aimed at providing actionable feedback to occupants towards sustainable energy usage. Part III presents energy services targeted at neighborhood and city level. These energy services aim to identify target consumers in a neighborhood based on their energy-usage pattern and preferences for various DR programs. Finally, we present data-processing architectures that investigate how to cope with the overwhelming data generated from smart meters towards design and development of sustainable, smart energy systems. This thesis advocates that the design and development of energy services should follow personalized approach with consumer preferences and comfort given paramount importance. Results show that the personalized energy services developed has significant potential to raise awareness, reduce energy consumption and improve user comfort in smart -- homes, buildings and neighborhoods.

Energy Conservation Strategy Research for Residential Building Refurbishment in Urban area of China

Abstract. While Iran has the richest energy source, but wastage and improper use of it has imposed irretrievable damages to our annual budget; such that construction division has allocated the most level of energy to itself with more than 40% of total energy produced in Iran and consumption of expenses equal to 30% of earning gained from oil sale. Since electricity energy has the most share of energy consumption in construction division, providing modern ways to reduce the consumption of this energy is necessary. Meanwhile using natural light in spaces has effective role in energy efficiency and preventing from dissipation of electricity energy since usual solutions in the modern time, namely using electrical illumination systems will result in space heating and bodily (eye) damages, beside very much expense. In this article, after mentioning the benefits of natural light in buildings, we will address the manner of using natural light in ancient architecture and finally will develop and discuss the modern methods of using this natural source like sun pipes, mirror conductors which other countries have used. Keywords: The least natural light, reducing energy consumption, sun pipes, mirror conductors

Due to the fact that the European Union is striving to achieve its sustainable development goals, in particular goal No. 7, which is to provide users with low-emission, and cheap access to, energy, this article’s aim is to verify whether there is a relationship between R&D expenditure and key energy variables in the EU countries in 2010–2020. Data on R&D expenditures incurred by the EU Member States in the period 2010–2020 were used for the research and were tested using the Autoregressive Distributed Lags Model (ARDL). The study identified a strong positive relationship between total R&D expenditure and the increase in energy consumption from renewable energy sources, and a smaller impact of total R&D expenditure as well as enterprise R&D expenditure on the increase in fossil energy consumption. Also noted was a weak relationship between R&D expenditure and electricity and gas prices for both household and non-household customers. The obtained results prove that in the context of the level of implementation of SDG No. 7 in the EU countries, R&D expenditure results in greater access to low-emission energy from renewable sources, but the achievement of the aforementioned sustainable development goal in other aspects (reduction in energy consumption from fossil fuels and ensuring lower price energy) is not possible with the current level of R&D expenditure.

Evaluating How Demand Side Resources Affect the Environmental and Economic Performance of Energy Systems

Using natural phenomena to reach indoor comfort has been known since early time and the oldest heritage architecture‘s and engineering of Middle East region, which has responded with such phenomena as well very good solutions special for hot-dry region (height temperature and radiation at summer and big variation between day and night temperature also between the hot summer and cool winter). This Architecture realized inside its houses optimum comfortable temperatures throughout nearly all the days of the yearlong. That was through equating with the volume adopting and the space taming with the different natural elements forces of the sun, atmosphere and climate as all which is common in these days as passive design strategies and reducing energy consumption . This research investigate the thermal mass and natural ventilation for traditional house (hot-dry region in Damascus) that gives high energy efficiency in providing cool indoor air through ventilation (single sided , cross ventilation) and envelope behavior, with the procedures of measurements combined with simulation program model, to improve Middle East new residential buildings through utilize combination of passive cooling and heating techniques. Natural ventilation in traditional building coupled with effects of massive construction and design assemble, provide thermal comfort (temperature control) over interior condition. This strategies are utilized to conserve energy in a hot-dry climate specially on middle east region as Damascus and other cities which have comfort traditional houses . The modern template applied by simulation program for traditional heating and cooling technique achieves thermal comfort related to occupant behavior and reduces energy consumption for new apartment of about 30-45% reduction of energy needs at Damascus, 20-35% at Cairo and 15-30% also at very hot dry climate as Riyadh.

بیان مساله:مصرف بالای انرژی در سکونت گاه‌های بشری باعث افزایش آلودگی‌های محیط شده است. بیش از 40 درصد انرژی کشور در ساختمان‌ها مصرف می‌شود که بخش عمده آن صرف گرمایش، سرمایش و روشنایی فضاهای داخلی می‌شود. با اتخاذ تدابیری نظیر بهینه‌سازی عایقکاری حرارتی پوسته خارجی ساختمان می‌توان این روند را کاهش داد. در ساختمان‌های مسکونی اقلیم سرد که از بیشترین نوسان دما برخوردار بوده، اهمیت این موضوع بیشتر به چشم می‌آید. سوال تحقیق: سوال این تحقیق عبارت از این می‌باشد که کاربرد پلی‌استایرن در پوسته خارجی ساختمان‌های مسکونی اقلیم سرد، تا چه میزان بر کاهش مصرف انرژی این ساختمان‌ها موثر است؟ اهداف تحقیق: هدف این پژوهش تعیین میزان تاثیر استفاده از پلی‌استایرن در کاهش بار حرارتی در ساختمان‌های مسکونی اقلیم سرد می‌باشد. روش تحقیق: این تحقیق، برپایه روش پژوهش شبیه‌سازی و سپس اعتبارسنجی نسبت به نمونه‌های واقعی، در قالب 11 واحد مسکونی به سنجش این اثر پرداخته است. مهم‌ترین یافته‌ها و نتیجه‌گیری تحقیق: نتایج حاصل از شبیه‌سازی و سنجش اعتبار آن با نمونه‌های واقعی در طول مدت پژوهش نشان داد که استفاده از پلی‌استایرن در پوسته خارجی ساختمان تا 43 درصد افزایش بار سرمایشی و 27 درصد کاهش بار گرمایشی براساس شرایط هریک از نمونه‌ها در طی ماه‌های مختلف سال را به دنبال دارد. اثر ترکیبی بارهای سرمایش و گرمایش در مجموع نشان از کاهش بار حرارتی ساختمان به طور کلی در طول یک سال دارد. این کاهش برای واحدهای نمونه اول 25/9 درصد معادل 34802/9 کیلو وات ساعت و برای واحدهای نمونه دوم 32/6 درصد معادل 30648/3 کیلو وات ساعت در طی یک سال می‌باشد.

Anthropogenic climate change poses a significant threat to the planet’s natural ecosystems on which human civilisation depends. Since industrialisation, society has relied on the burning of fossil fuels to supply human settlements with energy. To avoid severe climate change impacts requires: a transformation in the energy supply mix, together with a step-change in energy efficiency of technologies and change in energy consumption behaviours. Yet little is known about the tensions that these necessary changes may provoke. This research is motivated by the need to understand these tensions that arise from action to address sustainable development concerns. Urban consolidation is hypothesised as one form of action which has the potential to address sustainable development concerns through the influence of built environment on energy consumption. For instance, spread-out cities mean energy distribution networks have to cover longer distances (and hence consume more energy), while compacter cities based on high-rise buildings mean fewer opportunities to use solar photovoltaics for energy supply. Research efforts directed towards understanding such tensions place urban planning theory and practice at a crossroads with: a long-standing literature on energy consumption, emerging evidence on society’s transition to renewable energy, and thriving debates on the principles/norms upon which just societies are governed. The tensions which may arise among these domains of inquiry remain under-researched in the scientific literature. The purpose of this thesis is, through a series of related essays, to redress this gap and uncover the tensions between urban life, disadvantage, energy consumption, and the transition to renewable energy for Australian households. To undertake this investigation a number of different data sources are drawn on. This thesis takes advantage of two nation-wide surveys: the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, and the Household Energy Consumption Survey. Furthermore, this thesis uses administrative data on the installation of photovoltaics from the Australian Photovoltaic Institute, in addition to several other datasets readily available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This data is prepared using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software (ArcGIS 10.4.1) and a statistical software package (Stata/SE 14.2). A range of micro-econometric techniques were applied to reveal new insights. In the main this thesis: (1) highlights the presence of mechanisms in urban areas which can have an impact on the amount of energy consumed and on the number of energy saving actions undertaken; (2) shows the connection between the built environment and fuel poverty and how it may be moderated by financial disadvantage; (3) compiles a unique dataset for feed-in tariff policies throughout Australia’s States and Territories over time; and (4) approximates the short-run and long-run causal impacts of the built environment and feed-in tariffs on solar photovoltaic technology installations. The findings of this thesis draw attention to the more nuanced role of the built environment in energy consumption and the disparity in opportunity that disadvantaged groups confront and their potential to create energy injustice. In this respect, this thesis provides a distinct contribution to the existing stock of knowledge. Moreover, this thesis also informs further research to build on and extend these findings. Finally, this thesis also serves to support energy and land-use policy debates and decisions as they relate to the tensions between urban life, disadvantage, energy consumption, and the transition to renewable energy.

The move towards a de-carbonised world, driven partly by climate science and partly by the business opportunities it offers, will need the promotion of environmentally friendly alternatives, if an acceptable stabilisation level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be achieved. This requires the harnessing and use of natural resources that produce no air pollution or greenhouse gases and provides comfortable coexistence of human, livestock, and plants. This study reviews the energy-using technologies based on natural resources, which are available to and applicable in the farming industry. Integral concept for buildings with both excellent indoor environment control and sustainable environmental impact are reported in the present communication. Techniques considered are hybrid (controlled natural and mechanical) ventilation including night ventilation, thermo-active building mass systems with free cooling in a cooling tower, and air intake via ground heat exchangers. Special emphasis is put on ventilation concepts utilising ambient energy from air ground and other renewable energy sources, and on the interaction with heating and cooling. It has been observed that for both residential and office buildings, the electricity demand of ventilation systems is related to the overall demand of the building and the potential of photovoltaic systems and advanced co-generation units. The focus of the world’s attention on environmental issues in recent years has stimulated response in many countries, which have led to a closer examination of energy conservation strategies for conventional fossil fuels. One way of reducing building energy consumption is to design buildings, which are more economical in their use of energy for heating, lighting, cooling, ventilation and hot water supply. Passive measures, particularly natural or hybrid ventilation rather than air-conditioning, can dramatically reduce primary energy consumption. However, exploitation of renewable energy in buildings and agricultural greenhouses can, also, significantly contribute towards reducing dependency on fossil fuels. This article describes various designs of low energy buildings. It also, outlines the effect of dense urban building nature on energy consumption, and its contribution to climate change. Measures, which would help to save energy in buildings, are also presented.

بیان مسئله: توسعه گردشگری در ایران بدون توجه به میراث زیست بومی و پاسخگویی معماری به شرایط محیطی انجام می‌شود. توسعه پایدار گردشگری ساحلی در جزایر مرجانی، نیازمند رعایت ملاحظات زیست محیطی، کاهش هزینه‌ها در تامین انرژی و ایجاد شرایط آسایش برای افراد است. سوال تحقیق: چگونه می‌توان با در نظر‌گیری عوامل تاثیر‌گذار نظیر فرم، محل و جهت قرارگیری ساختمان، تعبیه سایبان، رنگ بنا، جنس دیوار­های پیرامونی و نحوه زون‌بندی فضاهای داخلی، گامی موثر در انطباق با اقلیم گرم و مرطوب، افزایش کارائی انرژی، و کاهش تاثیرات نامناسب سوخت های فسیلی برداشت؟ اهداف تحقیق: از آنجا که در توسعه کالبدی سواحل گردشگرپذیر، ساختمان‌ها، بیشترین مصرف کننده انرژی و نیز تولید کننده زباله، فاضلاب و آلودگی‌های محیطی هستند، ارایه راهکارهای مناسب در جهت اصلاح الگوی مصرف و کاهش آلایندگی ضروری می‌باشد. عدم توجه به حساسیت زیست محیطی این جزایر آسیب های جبران ناپذیری به اکوسیستم دریا - خشکی وارد می‌کند. در این پژوهش با بررسی زیست بوم جزیره مرجانی هندورابی و توجه به پارامترهای اقلیمی و محیطی آن، الگویی بهینه برای طراحی و یا بهسازی ساختمان‌های اقامتی – گردشگری با رویکرد به کارگیری روش غیرفعال و در جهت کاهش بار سرمایش، هزینه های انرژی مصرفی و میزان آلاینده های ناشی از تولید برق ارایه شده است. روش تحقیق: بر اساس تحلیل زیست اقلیمی و انرژی، و نیز رابطه ساختمان و محیط بر اساس مشاهدات میدانی و شبیه سازی بوده است. با استفاده از نرم افزار تحلیل‌گر محیطیDesign Builder در شرایط غیر پویا، میزان نیاز به انرژی در داخل و خارج بررسی و تحلیل می گردد. مهم‌ترین یافته‌ها و نتیجه‌گیری تحقیق: نتیجه این پژوهش نشان داد که توجه به جداره خارجی و الحاق عناصر معماری-همساز با اقلیم- به ساختمان‌های موجود می‌تواند بخش مهمی از میزان انرژی مورد نیاز را از طریق تعامل با محیط تامین و مقادیر آن را کاهش دهد. تحلیل داده­ها از مدل ایجاد شده نشان داد که روش های به کارگیری سایبان های ترکیبی افقی و عمودی، ایجاد حفاظ های تهویه‌پذیر بر روی پنجره‌ها، رواق‌های پیوسته، مصالح سبک، عایق‌های همگن و پلیمری، بهره‌گیری از آترویم و چرخش به سمت بادهای ساحلی تا 75 کیلووات ساعت بر متربع در سال از هزینه تولید انرژی و بار سرمایشی ساختمان می‌کاهد. همچنین اعمال راهبردهای زیست محیطی در طراحی معماری به طور مستقیم منجر به کاهش تولید گازهای گلخانه ای تا 126 تن در سال می‌گردد.

Sustainable High-rises

Sustainable High-rises

Previous research has shown that there is a strong link between people, buildings and climate: the building sector contributes up to 30 per cent of global annual greenhouse gas emissions and consumes up to 40 per cent of all energy. Most 20th-century buildings in the world are currently reliant on electro-mechanical cooling systems. Researchers and scholars have studied and analysed the sustainability issues in architecture casting light from different perspectives. However, such studies have seldom paid significant attention to the principles of sustainable Iranian architecture. Environmental sustainability and sustainable architecture in Iran are still relatively new concepts. This research fills the gap on the application of vernacular architecture to modern building design, particularly in the context of Iran and its climate by creating an informed and tested understanding of how vernacular architecture can inform modern building design and techniques. There have been limited studies on vernacular design as a source of knowledge which can contribute to 21st century challenges. The scope of this study is not only limited to Iran as its finding are also applicable to other countries with hot climates. As one of the key contributions, this thesis demonstrates how energy use in buildings can be minimised using such principles that are adopted from Iranian vernacular architecture. The study firstly relies on the state of the art literature review on vernacular architecture in Iran using secondary analysis, and then offers comparisons, analysis and hypotheses testing in the following sections. The challenge of extracting Iranian vernacular architecture principles (IVAP) has been achieved by a multi-method approach. Site observations, sketches, drawings and measurements at the early stages were reinforced by further detailed analysis of the literature beyond IVAP, and supplemented by studies in sustainable design such as passive design. It was found that IVAP have many common elements which are shared today by passive design. The methodology for the above consists of simulation modelling and comparisons of the energy in use for building designed using IVAP versus designs using conventional building techniques in Iran. By using energy software packages (Integrated Environmental Solutions, Design Builder, CC5) it is found that the application of IVAP can significantly improve energy consumption in buildings. The research also explores a novel approach and tests the feasibility of using ‘adobe’ as an insulation material for construction of walls. The analysis involves construction of a wall using this new approach (inspired by IVAP) and testing it in the lab for its energy performance. The findings confirm that as a building material, ‘adobe’ could be potentially a feasible and environmentally friendly substitute to conventional insulation with additional sustainable benefits such as using local materials and preservation of traditional culture in the region. Another contribution of this study is to offer a deeper understanding of the drivers and barriers to the implementation of IVAP in today’s architecture in Tehran, Iran. To achieve this a survey was conducted which revealed that an integral part of the implementation and application of IVAP is education and design of the UG and PG curricula. Recommendations are made to highlight the necessary and critical adjustment to policies regarding promotion of IVAP to safeguard the environment and national and cultural identities.

The world faces an energy and climate crisis. After an unprecedented worldwide increase in energy consumption, which has largely been based on the use of fossil fuels, mankind is challenged by global warming and its consequences. The demand for renewable energy has focused our attention on capturing the inexhaustible solar energy. Photovoltaic (PV) devices based on silicon have been and remain the most popular choice. However, the high purity demands of this technique are a drawback for cheap energy production from solar power. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSCs) are a valuable alternative for low-cost PVs since the separation of light-harvesting and charge transport implicates less stringent purity demands of the built-in compositions. Replacing rare ruthenium used in Gratzel-type n-type DSCs by more Earthabundant and sustainable metals is a goal of our research group. This thesis describes the use of heteroleptic Cu(I) dyes using phenanthroline ancillary ligands to harvest light. Chapter 1 gives a short overview of the current energy problems and outlines the current status of the literature relevant to this thesis. Chapter 2 describes the methods for the characterization of the investigated dyes and their application in dye sensitized solar cells (DSCs). Chapter 3 shows the synthesis and characterization of ligands and of copper(I) complexes designed for application in DSCs. Chapter 4 compares the performances of DSCs containing heteroleptic Cu(I) complexes made from [Cu(13)2][PF6] (ligand 13 contains a peripheral hole-transporting NPh2 group) and four different anchoring ligands with carboxylic acid (ALC1) or phosphonic acid (ALP, ALP1 and ALP1 TBA) anchors. Chapter 5 investigates the differences between heteroleptic Cu(I) dyes from several phenanthroline based ancillary ligands in combination with anchoring ligand ALP1. Chapter 6 deals with the optimization of I−/I3− electrolytes for [Cu(15)(ALP1)]+ sensitized solar cells (ligand 15 contains a peripheral hole-transporting domain related to that in ligand 13). Chapter 7 shows the incorporation of [Co(bpy)3][PF6]2/3 electrolyte in DSCs using [Cu(13)(ALP1)]+ and [Cu(15)(ALP1)]+ sensitizers. Chapter 8 lists the experimental details. Chapter 9 concludes the work and gives an outlook for future work.

In the wake of the transition from fossil and nuclear energy systems to a renewable energy age, the question of how to politically implement effective instruments and policies is a challenge in many industrialized countries. Whereas the need for a more sustainable energy production in the context of environmental and climate change is strongly acknowledged, the support for effective policies among political actors and the public is much more limited. This observation has been extensively discussed in the literature referring to the so-called value-action gap (Bell, Gray, & Haggett, 2005; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002), or to the concept of social acceptance, i.e., suggesting that preferences for renewable energy technologies do not necessarily imply support for specific policies and projects (Dermont, Ingold, Kammermann, & Stadelmann-Steffen, 2017; Wustenhagen, Wolsink, & Burer, 2007). This is the starting point of this paper aiming at a better understanding of the link between pro-environmental and climate change attitudes and according behavior. More precisely, this paper focuses on citizens’ support of renewable energy policies at the ballot box and departs from the assumption that citizens’ voting behavior on these policy proposals is the result of multidimensional decisions. In other words, a policy proposal consists of various elements some of which an individual may support while rejecting others. Voters weight these pros and cons against each other in order to come to a “no” or “yes” decision. In a recent contribution, we have shown that the costs related to renewable energy policies are the crucial hurdle to popular support. Moreover, given that many citizens do not believe in the efficacy of and need for (environmental) policy measures there is not clear “benefit” that could compensate for these costs in individual benefit-cost considerations (Stadelmann-Steffen & Dermont, 2018). In this paper, I go a step further and ask how individual environmental and climate change attitudes affect this multidimensional decision making on renewable energy policies. Following these considerations, I present results based on a large-scale representative survey from Switzerland. A forced-choice paired conjoint analysis (Hainmueller, Hopkins, & Yamamoto, 2014) allows to evaluate how specific aspects of policy proposals influence individual support or rejection of a whole proposal. Moreover, interactions between these policy characteristics and individual environmental and climate change attitudes are estimated to analyze what elements of these policies jeopardize the link between these attitudes and according political behavior. Although the proposed study focuses on Switzerland and cannot necessarily be generalized to other contexts, I argue that the expected results are relevant beyond the Swiss case. Policies to promote renewable energy production and to reduce energy consumption vary between nations and across sub-national jurisdictions, but they are often based on “universal” economic models (e.g., environmental steering taxes and their effect on energy consumption) and generally consist of rather complex bundles of policy measures. Hence, knowing more about how these aspects interact with individual attitudes and behavior provides important insights on the attitude-behavior link beyond the case of Switzerland.