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Life Cycle Assessment of Residential Buildings Considering Photovoltaic Systems

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Jabri_Dhia.pdf (1.97 MB)

Date

2018-09-05

Authors

Jabri, Dhia

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University of Waterloo

Abstract

Nowadays, energy consumption in the building sector is considered one of the main contributors to increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which is having an enormous negative environmental impact worldwide. Correspondingly, rising CO2 emissions have become a global environmental issue. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) have been deployed for evaluation of the ecological impact of the building sector will be used to analyze and assess ecological effects. Many studies utilize different LCA approaches to examine the building sector’s energy consumption. Some of these studies aimed to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the building segment by the adoption of two new building structure categories in the Industrial Building System (IBS). However, but neglect to consider the integration of LCA and Photovoltaic (PV) systems added to the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems and the resulting impact on the load demand of the buildings. The primary objective of this research is to consider the different phases of life cycle energy and CO2 analysis of a PV system integrated residential building by designing geometry, spaces, and thermal zones in Sketch Up and simulating the building and calculating the energy load in EnergyPlus. For illustrative purposes, a single residential building in Toronto was simulated. Moreover, carbon emissions of the residential building were calculated through LCA and compared with the case of added PV systems. Also, different life cycle phases of the residential building were employed to calculate the energy consumption using EnergyPlus. More significantly, the focus is on HVAC, lighting, and electronic equipment using the OpenStudio plug-in for the SketchUp modeling software. OpenStudio is used as an interface of the EnergyPlus modeling software, and the results are compared with those that include the PV system. As a result of the LCA of the building, it was found that there would be a significant reduction in operating cost, energy cost, and CO2 emissions. However, the capital cost would increase by integrating PV systems, but it would be less significant considering a higher carbon tax in the future.

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PV system

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http://hdl.handle.net/10012/13736

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Chemical Engineering