Abstract
Nowadays, cities and districts are becoming more and more interconnected in terms of energy supply systems, and the transition towards smart connected thermal and electrical grids is inevitable. While single building-level modelling has demonstrated numerous technical and economic benefits, it is vital to scale up the approach and consider the larger picture of cluster of buildings, districts, and cities. The island of Ærø in Denmark has an ambitious goal to become the first CO<sub>2</sub> neutral and renewable energy self-sufficient Danish Island by 2025, as well as becoming a fossil-fuel free island by 2030. With the ambitious energy and environmental aims of Ærø island, this work aims to investigate the capability of establishing part of the island as the first Danish positive energy district (PED) and assess various design scenarios and possibilities of upgrading/modifying the current scheme and composition of energy supply and distribution. An open-source urban scale modelling tool is used, City Energy Analyst (CEA), where the district is modelled considering all specifications and characteristics of buildings and the corresponding energy supply systems. The base case scenario is simulated, and the performance is calibrated using actual data. Then, multiple energy improvement measures targeting the buildings envelope as well as the energy generation and supply systems are developed and simulated to assess the impact on the overall energy consumption for heating and electricity. The results show that a PED can be established employing an improvement package of envelope-targeting measures, energy systems upgrades and renewable energy systems expansion.
Highlights
To reduce the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, the European Commission (EC) has set a long-term strategy to implement sustainable solutions in the pursue for a net zero GHG emission in the EU by 2050 (European Commission, 2019)
When different heating sources are added in the packages, the heating consumption is reduced in the case of all the packages, while the electricity consumption is only reduced for four out of the five other packages compared to Package 1
The building sector worldwide has a major contribution in the overall energy consumption with at least 35% share in the total energy and a similar contribution in the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions
Summary
To reduce the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, the European Commission (EC) has set a long-term strategy to implement sustainable solutions in the pursue for a net zero GHG emission in the EU by 2050 (European Commission, 2019). In this context, dynamic energy modelling and simulation has served as a key approach towards realizing the impacts of improving the building stock energy performance and reporting the added value on the technical, economic and environmental levels. In terms of the economic feasibility of using building energy modelling, it was reported that the development of a detailed building dynamic energy model has an overall payback period of around 1–2 months (HOK, 2016). Such short payback period supports the use of such model-driven approaches to aid decisionmaking in the context of designing, operating, controlling, and commissioning of new and existing buildings
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