Energy Systems and Energy Sharing in Traditional and Sustainable Archetypes of Urban Developments

Caroline Hachem-Vermette,Kuljeet Singh

doi:10.3390/su14031356

Abstract

Diverse factors influence the energy profile of an urban development including density, shape of buildings and their types, energy demand, and available energy resources. A systematic investigation of the energy characteristics of urban areas, involves the determination of representative archetypes of urban developments. This study presents a comparison of energy performance and resources between two categories of traditionally built urban development building clusters (BCs) in the North American urban context, and neighborhood units (NUs) designed with various sustainable principles and considerations. The study presents a methodology to optimize the mix of energy resources of individual building clusters and neighborhoods, as well as the optimization of energy sharing among the individual urban units of each category. Optimal energy sharing is determined based on the best combination of energy deficit and energy surplus of various clusters and neighborhoods. The study shows that in general neighborhood units encompassing diverse building uses and designed to allow different amenities within a walking distance perform better than commonly built building clusters with low usage diversity. Highly diverse neighborhoods that combine large commercial areas to high density residential buildings can generate up to 84% of their annual electrical and up to 37% of their annual thermal consumption. PV generation accounts for major part of the electrical energy generation of both individual urban units (BCs and NUs) and combination of these units. This can reach up to 92% of the total energy consumption of some combinations of NUs, while the remaining energy requirement is fulfilled by wind and waste to energy (3.4% and 4.9%, respectively). On the other hand, the study shows that thermal energy is mostly supplied by alternative energy sources, since building surfaces prioritize the accommodation of PV modules.

Highlights

Challenges of meeting sustainability goals such as reducing energy consumption and mitigating environmental impact can be better analyzed at a small but representative urban development defined as a neighborhood unit [1]
Results of the investigation firstly include the comparisons of the trends of the energy performance of building clusters (BCs) to the sustainable neighborhood units (NUs)
The optimization of energy resources mixes of each category of development is summarized followed by the sharing potential among different clusters/neighborhood units and optimal combinations to achieve maximum energy sharing

Summary

Introduction

Challenges of meeting sustainability goals such as reducing energy consumption and mitigating environmental impact can be better analyzed at a small but representative urban development defined as a neighborhood unit [1]. An optimal energy resource or a mix of energy resources depends on building types within a neighborhood and their design and requires efficient methods to manage local energy consumption and production [7,8]. Individual energy sources such as solar [9,10], wind energy [11], district heating [12], and waste to energy [13] and their application to whole urban areas [14] are investigated and reported in various researches

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion