Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the “Quartier Nord”: objective zero-power

Buildings account for almost 40% of energy consumption in European countries and hence are responsible for a significant part of greenhouse gas emissions. Recent regulations and standards (Minergie, Minergie P, etc.) are strongly encouraging more sustainable buildings by decreasing energy consumption and integrating more renewable energy sources. It is essential, in such a context, to evaluate the performance of buildings and to determine how relevant are the integration of renewable energies and how their implementation can be improved in order to give full autonomy to such a district (towards zero power districts). In order to achieve this, it is here proposed to use building energy simulation tools to simulate the heating and cooling energy demand. First Energy Plus is used to simulate the demand with a detailed geometrical model of the STCC. Although the results did not give good agreement when compared with a set of measured and recorded data, they corresponded to what has been expected from the Minergie standards. The geometrical model is then simplified and used as input for simulations with both CitySim and Energy Plus. The differences between both models are considered to be acceptable (15%). Finally, the evaluation of the potential for the integration of renewable energy and storage capacity is done with CitySim. This work is expected to provide a methodology which could be used in the evaluation of building energy use and help with the integration of renewable energy at a neighbourhood scale along with the dimensioning of the energy storage. Furthermore we gave a quantitative analysis of the differences between the two models. It is thus proposed in future work to couple both models using a co-simulation technique, to take advantage of the performance of CitySim and Energy Plus models and to include processes at different scales.