Special Issue “Net-Zero/Positive Energy Buildings and Districts”

Introduction to the Special Issue on Energy Efficient Buildings

The current energy prices are at a historically high level. This, ombined with technological advances, has led to a surge in the nterest in energy savings in buildings. Buildings are traditionlly the domain of civil engineers, but from a modeling, control nd optimal operation point of view, there are strong similarities ith industrial processes, where use of control and other system ngineering ...

Special Issue

Standard Unretrofitted Buildings and Net Zero-Energy Concept

There are many different possible combinations of building envelope, utility equipments and onsite energy generation equipments that can lead to net zero-energy performance. For instance, a building with standard design can offset its energy demand by adding a large amount of photovoltaic cells or by improving its energy efficiency rating first and then adding a smaller amount of photovoltaic c...

Photonic microstructures for energy-generating clear glass and net-zero energy buildings

Transparent energy-harvesting windows are emerging as practical building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), capable of generating electricity while simultaneously reducing heating and cooling demands. By incorporating spectrally-selective diffraction gratings as light deflecting structures of high visible transparency into lamination interlayers and using improved spectrally-selective thin-film c...

The Power of Diversity: Data-Driven Robust Predictive Control for Energy Efficient Buildings and Districts

The cooperative energy management of aggregated buildings has recently received a great deal of interest due to substantial potential energy savings. These gains are mainly obtained in two ways: (i) Exploiting the load shifting capabilities of the cooperative buildings; (ii) Utilizing the expensive but energy efficient equipment that is commonly shared by the building community (e.g., heat pump...