Energy Conservation Measures and Solar Energy Integration in Hot Climate Residential Buildings

摘要

Residential buildings consume a major part of primary energy production and there is a huge energy saving potential in these buildings. This study aims to explore various energy conservation opportunities in residential sector of Saudi Arabia when available standards are employed as compared to the typical local design practices. After implementing the energy conservation measures in a residential building, efforts have been made to meet part of the energy requirements by using solar energy. Based on the information collected from literature, the local design practices including physical, thermal, and operational characteristics were defined for a typical single family residential building in Dhahran. The building was model using simulation packages and considered as the base case scenario. Parametric analysis was carried out for different design considerations for building envelope to improve the thermal performance of the building. Engineering justifications for an optimum envelop design were presented and discussed in details. A proposed case study was performed according to the benchmark design considerations of IECC (International Energy Conservation Code), 2012 and the simulation results were compared with the base case scenario in order to evaluate the energy saving potential. The efforts for solar energy integration to meet the part of the energy requirements was accomplished by using passive solar water heating systems using evacuate tube solar collectors. The credibility of solar energy integrated building was justified in terms of its economic as well as eco-environmental benefits.