Demonstration of the Nearly Zero Energy Building Concept

Abstract

Nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) will become an obligatory energy efficiency standard in Europe. Following to common guidelines in European legislation, the countries investigated technical and economic framework for the preparation of detailed national technical definition of nZEB. Slovenia accepted the nZEB criteria in early 2015. This paper describes the technical and economic background for identification of economically viable concepts of highly energy efficient apartment building. The highrise demonstration building Eco Silver House revealed that meeting nZEB standards was not an easy task, not so much for technical reasons, but mostly due to the processes, inadequate skills, not fully compliant regulation and insufficient possibilities for interaction between the building and energy networks. Analysis of cost effectiveness showed that the Eco Silver House fulfilled minimal requirements of cost-optimal for apartment building with Net Present Value of 272 EUR/m2 and Primary energy use of 79 kWh/ m2?a in line with the Slovenian national cost optimal study of minimum energy performance requirements from the year 2014. At the time, the requirement of 50% share of renewables in final energy use is not fulfilled, but will be easily reached when EU2020 energy efficiency targets set in the Slovenian Energy Act regarding the RES share in district heating systems and public power grid will be gradually implemented. The demonstration project FP7 EE-HIGHRISE confirms that in spite of the barriers, the nZEB minimum requirements defined on profound theoretical studies can be met in practice.