Abstract

With the growing concerns about climate change, Northern Canada is aiming to adopt a “net-zero ready” model building code by 2030. Northern Canada has its unique environmental loads and challenges – namely, the extremely cold climate and the high expense, as the north imports most of its materials and fuel from the south. Significant energy savings could be achieved by optimizing the design of building envelopes and integrating solar design strategies, with a little added construction cost. This thesis focuses on optimizing the passive solar design parameters and the use of thermal and electrical energy from building integrated photovoltaic/thermal (BIPV/T) system as moves toward net-zero energy housing in northern Canada. A reference house representing the typical residential building in northern regions is modeled in EnergyPlus software to study the building design parameters, including thermal resistance of the building envelope, thermal mass, window-wall ratio, shading schedule and ventilation rate. The optimization is carried out by coupling EnergyPlus and Matlab using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. The optimal house under a 25-year life cycle in Yellowknife, NWT, could achieve a 46% energy savings with an initial construction cost increase of 10%. Based on this optimized house, the optimal use of thermal energy produced by a BIPV/T system is evaluated by integration with the space heating system, heat recovery ventilation (HRV) and air-source heat pump (ASHP). Simulation results show that a BIPV/T system with a space heating system can reduce total energy consumption by 15.5%, a BIPV/T system with a HRV could decrease the frost risk time by 8.8% and defrost time by 7.8%, and a BIPV/T system with an ASHP could extend the ASHP working period by 128 hours and increase the annual COP about 2.5%.