Analysis of optimal energy supply in the commercial buildings: a bird garden case study

ABSTRACT

Energy consumption in residential and commercial buildings is one of the main scopes of energy studies. These buildings have a high potential for saving energy and applying renewable energy technologies. This research goal is to explore an energy demand analysis in a commercial birds’ exhibition building. In the first step, the heating and cooling loads are calculated with consideration of the birds’ thermal needs. In the next step, total electricity demand is determined by visual inspection, and a new approach is proposed for saving energy by classifying the birds in the studied building. Finally, an optimal combination of electricity generation resources, including wind and solar energy resources, is designed. The result is compared with the current electricity supply (electricity grid) based on economic and environmental factors. The results indicate that energy consumption is decreased by about 21.49% based on the introduced approach, while the renewable strategy is economically reasonable. This energy-saving caused 31% lower NPV for the grid-connected energy supply and 21% lower NPV for the renewable-powered energy supply.

KEYWORDS:

• Financial analysis
• renewable energy
• net-zero-energy building
• commercial building

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).