Cost-effectiveness of active and passive design strategies for existing building retrofits in tropical climate: Case study of a zero energy building

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Author(s)
Sun, Xiaonuan
Gou, Zhonghua
Lau, Stephen Siu-Yu
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2018
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This research investigated the first zero energy building (ZEB) in Southeast Asia which was retrofitted from an existing building and incorporated diverse passive and active design strategies for the tropical climate. The study disclosed the efficiency improvement through each individual design strategy and also compared the cost-effectiveness of active and passive categories. The most cost effective active strategy was efficient lighting; and the second was efficient air conditioning systems. The most cost effective passive strategy was lighting pies; and the second was lighting controls. Generally, passive strategies might ...
View more >This research investigated the first zero energy building (ZEB) in Southeast Asia which was retrofitted from an existing building and incorporated diverse passive and active design strategies for the tropical climate. The study disclosed the efficiency improvement through each individual design strategy and also compared the cost-effectiveness of active and passive categories. The most cost effective active strategy was efficient lighting; and the second was efficient air conditioning systems. The most cost effective passive strategy was lighting pies; and the second was lighting controls. Generally, passive strategies might have longer period of payback. It should be noted that the ZEB was a test-bedding project; therefore, the finding on passive design cost-effectiveness should be cautiously interpreted considering the scale of applications. The research suggests that active and passive strategies should be integrated into building design to optimize the energy performance. Particularly, passive design shall be applied in a large scale to have significant energy improvements.
View less >
View more >This research investigated the first zero energy building (ZEB) in Southeast Asia which was retrofitted from an existing building and incorporated diverse passive and active design strategies for the tropical climate. The study disclosed the efficiency improvement through each individual design strategy and also compared the cost-effectiveness of active and passive categories. The most cost effective active strategy was efficient lighting; and the second was efficient air conditioning systems. The most cost effective passive strategy was lighting pies; and the second was lighting controls. Generally, passive strategies might have longer period of payback. It should be noted that the ZEB was a test-bedding project; therefore, the finding on passive design cost-effectiveness should be cautiously interpreted considering the scale of applications. The research suggests that active and passive strategies should be integrated into building design to optimize the energy performance. Particularly, passive design shall be applied in a large scale to have significant energy improvements.
View less >
Journal Title
Journal of Cleaner Production
Volume
183
Copyright Statement
© 2018 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
Subject
Architectural Science and Technology (incl. Acoustics, Lighting, Structure and Ecologically Sustainable Design)
Environmental Engineering
Manufacturing Engineering
Interdisciplinary Engineering