Page 9 - Demo

analyzing the site during the hottest month of summer and the coldest month of winter in coldand semi-arid weather. The data collected were classified into two groups. The first categoryincluded a set of annual temperature data and the second one was a list of the buildingcomponents, including the specification of materials and their implementation details. Thesedata were used for computerized simulations to thermal analysis of the model, its energyperformance and the design of an appropriate PV system in the software. The most importantdata analyzed were associated with the proper orientation of the structure for maximum use ofthe sun, the amount of annual energy required for building and the amount of energy derivedfrom the solar system in cold and semi-arid climatic conditions. In the second stage, a computermodel was simulated to validate the proposed design using the data calculated. DesignBuilderis a graphical software for simulation of energy consumption in the building, in which theproblem solution is performed by the powerful %u201cEnergyPlus%u201d engine. The EnergyPlussimulation engine has been developed by the US Energy Department in 2011 and is recognizedas one of the most prestigious energy modeling software. The reliability of the Energy Plussoftware has been confirmed, according to Building Energy Simulation Test (Bestest) andASHRAE 14 standards (Zomorodian and Tahsildoost, 2015; Naghdalizadeh and Heybati,2015). Energy simulation software such as eQuest, DesignBuilder and Ecotect are widely usedto model the energy performance of buildings (Ham and Golparvar-Fard, 2013). PVsystsoftware is used to design a renewable energy system. This software is comprehensive andapplied software in the field of solar systems, which includes a set of tools for examining,sizing, simulating and analyzing data of PV systems. This software, which is continuallydeveloped at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, is one of the most important and mostwidely used software tools in the design of solar systems. In the third stage, two buildings, onein accordance with the principles of sustainable design (Trombe wall, optimal orientation,canopy, proper insulation selection) and one without these principles, were designed andsimulated under different conditions to compare their energy and environmental performance.Moreover, at this point, the solar photovoltaic system (PV) was designed to obtain as muchrenewable energy as possible. In the final stage, an adaptive comparison was made to specifythe amount of energy reduction with respect to the principles of sustainable design, as well asthe feasibility of building a ZEB in a cold and semi-arid climate. As the ZEB refers to its gridconnected type, if the energy obtained is less than the required amount of energy over a fewconsecutive cloudy days, the building will provide its energy from the power grid and in dayswhen the system has surplus energy, this energy will be injected into the grid. Hence, theannual energy required for the building and energy yield of the renewable energy system canbe compared with each other. Figure 1 shows the steps of the study method in the followingflowchart format.Weather dataStage one: The 1-h climate data of Mashhad was used based on the climatic data of 1991%u20132010,using the Meteonorm software database. Mashhad is located at the latitude of 36.2605%u00b0 N, thelongitude of 59.6168%u00b0 E and an altitude of 985 m. The city is topographically composed of twotypes of terrains of mountainous and plain. Based on the climatic classification, Mashhad islocated in a cold and semi-arid climate (Kasmaei, 2006). The average annual temperature andprecipitation in Mashhad are 15.3%u00b0C and 217.38 mm, respectively. In addition, the hottest andcoldest months are July and January, with an average temperature of, respectively, 27.4%u00b0Cand 3.3%u00b0C (Climate, 2016). The 12-year-old weather data of Mashhad (2002%u20132014) was collectedfrom the regional weather station as an annual indicator according to the recommendations ofthe same station. This collection of climatic information was used in thermal modeling topredict annual energy consumption and building optimal orientation under variousIJESM