Developing a Net Zero Energy Building: A Case Study of an Institutional Library

Abstract

The growing energy demand and means to fulfill it has contributed a lot to ever-increasing carbon emission in the atmosphere.The energy sector in India is facing constant challenges to produce clean energy,and with growing energy demand, this sector has already faced a lot of stress to deal with current situation. To mitigate this challenge all the sectors which are using energy needs to optimize their energy use and to find renewables means to generate energy to fulfill their needs. The building industry is accountable for 40 percent of the total energy consumption and thus needs to improve their energy use through energy efficiency measures and renewable energy use. Energy efficiency in educational buildings is rarely addressed when talked about buildings in general, although, educational buildings can act as a living laboratory for energy efficient building design and can act as role model for surrounding community for transferring knowledge. The library building is one of the most important buildings in the educational campuses,and the most happening place presents a challenge for achieving energy efficiency due to its variable occupancy rates during operational hours. Case study approach is used for this paper for finding out the renewable energy (solar photovoltaic) generational potential of the library building located on the educational campus. For this study, PVsyst software was used for simulating the library building for finding the possibility of implementing solar photovoltaic panels and thus making building self-sufficient on the guidelines of net-zero energy building. Some variable that affects the sizing of the photovoltaic panel for the buildings were taken up includes the area of the roof, shading factors, inverter size, etc. It was found that the with proper integration of solar photovoltaic system and reducing the energy use can be useful in making library building low carbon buildings and with improvement in technology in the field of solar PV systems it may be possible to make library buildings net-zero energy buildings in the near future.