Zero Energy Building Refurbishment & Energy Neutral Urban Clusters in Haarlem

Abstract

In recent years the world is becoming more aware on the burden of the fossil fuels on the planets ecosystem as well as climate. One of the major reasons is, due to greenhouse gasses in which most of them are caused by carbon release by consumption of fossil fuels. The building sector in almost every country is a major contributor to the consumption of carbon-based fuels either for space conditioning, water heating or for electricity.

Operational energy in buildings must be lowered by bold measures to a point or the building should generate as equal as renewable energy as they consume. However it is not realistic to match the consumed energy if the building does not go through an energy refurbishment to reduce operational energy consumption. Refurbishment of ill performing building gives an advantage on not only reducing the operational energy consumption but also user comfort could be increased in the building.

Refurbishment in the report is integrated with the SUI project, which aims to create zero energy neighborhoods in Ramplaankwartier, Haarlem. The building to be refurbished is selected accordingly f and natural gas usage is aimed to be eliminated while annual energy balance is sustained in the building.

The report starts with a thorough literature research on four different topics. First of the topics is zero energy building definitions globally defined along with most commonly used zero energy building definitions in the Netherlands to highlight the important aspects in defining a zero energy design approach. Second topic is refurbishment strategies for the building envelope regarding different applications and scales are checked to determine viable options.

Third one is the regulations for refurbishment applications, necessary thermal performance values in the refurbishment buildings and the necessary comfort conditions in the buildings. Lastly the final topic is a to check refurbishment examples on row-houses in the Netherlands to highlight possible measures of refurbishments, their application and detailing, impact on residents and consumed energy reduction.

Case study design is based on achieving annual zero energy balance in case study building. Application of refurbishment strategies for the building envelope is divided into two for increasing the varieties of measures later on these measures are given detail on how they could be executed in real life.
The case study measures aim to influence the building envelope composition such as Insulation levels, glazing thermal performance with passive solar gain and the infiltration rate of the building skin. Comfort in primary spaces will be tinkered to achieve necessary user comfort requirements in dwellings, while ventilation system is determined along with comfort provision in space.

After comfort measures are applied, building services will be evaluated to systems will be switched to full electricity to eliminate natural gas usage for space heating and domestic heated water. With the lowered energy consumption, energy generation on site will be utilized to create annual balance for the building to achieve zero energy building criteria’s.

Eventually all the refurbishment and energy generation measures will be applied to neighboring buildings to evaluate the advantages of application of energy generation in combination with the other refurbished buildings rather than individual generation. Effects of individual and group application of energy generation measures will be compared to determine advantages of each approach.

It is possible to use different measures for energy refurbishment to reduce space and heating energy and possibly energy on lighting itself. Usage of higher insulation values, better glazing, lower infiltration is always an option in building refurbishments however it all comes to the application of the theoretical measures accepted through calibration and the execution of these accepted measures is important to deliver accurate conditions in the refurbished buildings.

Different energy generation methods can be applied besides PV panels. Integration of wind energy for electrical building systems can be interesting. Totally integrated building services and on-site generation system with wood pellets and boiler system for individual or larger scale to provide zero energy balance for a group of buildings in a constant period of time. Energy storage for photovoltaic options could be used to eliminate seasonal energy mismatch for operational energy in a large scale for the neighborhood or for individual purposes with batteries.