Management strategy for building—photovoltaic with battery energy storage

Jain M., Saihjpal V., Singh N., Singh S.B.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the most famous swarm-based optimization techniques inspired by nature. Due to its properties of flexibility and easy implementation, there is an enormous increase in the popularity of this nature-inspired technique. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has gained prompt attention from every field of researchers. Since its origin in 1995 till now, researchers have improved the original Particle swarm optimization (PSO) in varying ways. They have derived new versions of it, such as the published theoretical studies on various parameters of PSO, proposed many variants of the algorithm and numerous other advances. In the present paper, an overview of the PSO algorithm is presented. On the one hand, the basic concepts and parameters of PSO are explained, on the other hand, various advances in relation to PSO, including its modifications, extensions, hybridization, theoretical analysis, are included.

Vassiliades C., Agathokleous R., Barone G., Forzano C., Giuzio G.F., Palombo A., Buonomano A., Kalogirou S.

Solar building integration, differs from everyday active solar energy systems on a building envelope, because the active system replaces building elements and are integrated into the architectural envelope and structure. This article aims to present a comprehensive review and analyse the geometrical and architectural characteristics and design possibilities offered by the building integration of active solar energy systems. The literature studies are separated into double and single façade solutions, as well as solutions where the active system performs as an independent architectural element of the building. It is concluded that the majority of the researchers preferred the single façade solutions, followed by the double façade systems since the second one offers a cavity which can be used as an air duct for the BIPV (Building Integrated Photovoltaics) and BIPV/T (Building Integrated Photovoltaic/Thermal) solutions. This work provides an overview of the state of the art systems and geometrical solutions emerging by the development, research, and applications of the BISS (Building Integrated Solar Systems). • Review of geometrical and architectural characteristics and design possibilities offered by BISS. • Overview of the BISS state of the art systems and geometrical solutions. • Categorized in double and single façades and in independent architectural elements. • Researchers fail to distinguish the difference between BISS and BASS. • Single façades are preferred followed by Double façades and architectural elements.

Meng Z., Zhong Y., Mao G., Liang Y.

Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) is a well-known and powerful meta-heuristic algorithm in Swarm Intelligence (SI), and it was invented by simulating the foraging behavior of bird flock in 1995. Recently, many different PSO variants were proposed to tackle different optimization applications, however, the overall performance of these variants were not satisfactory. In this paper, a new PSO variant is advanced to tackle single-objective numerical optimization, and there are three contributions mentioned in the paper: First, a sorted particle swarm with hybrid paradigms is proposed to improve the optimization performance; Second, novel adaptation schemes both for the ratio of each paradigm and the constriction coefficients are proposed during the iteration; Third, a fully-informed search scheme based on the global optimum in each generation is proposed which helps the algorithm to jump out the local optimum and improve the overall performance. A large test suite containing benchmarks from CEC2013, CEC2014 and CEC2017 test suites on real-parameter single-objective optimization is employed in the algorithm validation, and the experiment results show the competitiveness of our algorithm with the famous or recently proposed state-of-the-art PSO variants.

Wang P., Liu Z., Zhang L.

• A state-of-the art review and discussion is presented for the inter-building effect. • A concise summary of the research methods and tools is made. • The impact degree of the IBE on building energy and solar energy use in different climate zones is summarized and analysed. • Outlooks and recommendations for inter-building effect can facilitate its further development. With the continuous advancement of urbanization, the impact of inter-building effect on urban energy use has been concerned. This paper makes a comprehensive review of the correlation between inter-building effect and building energy and solar energy use for the first time. For cities with different climate, the impact of inter-building effect on building energy consumption including cooling, heating, and lighting are discussed and quantitatively summarized. Besides, the review and discussion on the impact of inter-building effect on indoor thermal comfort shows that there is insufficient research and should be paid more attention in this field. From the different output forms of solar energy systems, the impact of inter-building effect on the BIPV system and STC system is also reviewed and quantitatively summarized. A concise summary of the research methods of the IBE is made and the software used for modeling is discussed. The review found that the influence degree of the inter-building effect varies greatly with different climatic zones. Considering the inter-building effect to guide early urban designing can greatly reduce building energy consumption and increase solar energy utilization. Some limitations of the current research, as well as general recommendations for the future are discussed. Future work requires engineers and scientists in the building industry and beyond to work together to contribute to the sustainable development of urban energy use.

Skandalos N., Karamanis D.

• Optimal PV building integration depends on climate zones. • Semi-transparent PVs eliminate overheating and boost flexibility index in hot climates. • PV shadings optimize environmental and energy indicators in moderate climates. • Opaque BIPV is more attractive for utilizing on-site PV generation in cold climates. Building integrated photovoltaic systems (BIPVs) focusing on windows, such as semi-transparent photovoltaic (STPV) or PV shading devices (PVSD), are proposed as efficient approaches to the production of electricity and the improvement of building energy performance. However, glass replacement with advanced PV concepts needs thorough energy and environmental assessment, since it took more than a millennium to produce transparent window glass of high visibility. Despite the many published studies in relation to the performance of each technology, there are limited comparative investigations of the proposed PV integration options and the most appropriate integration solutions for different climatic regions. Here, we report, for the first time, on the energy performance of four BIPVs that control solar radiation through windows and their effect on the built environment for three different climatic zones. The evaluation was done through TRNSYS simulations and calculation of representative indexes associated with thermal and visual comfort. A BIPV-flexibility index, given as a ratio of self-sufficiency to self-consumption, is proposed as a figure of merit for the assessment of each BIPV technology’s electricity production and its effect on building energy performance. The findings clearly show that BIPVs could substantially contribute to the transition to zero energy buildings due to their passive energy benefits (up to 43% savings) in addition to their electricity production. Opaque module, PV shadings and PV windows optimize the BIPV-flexibility index (up to 0.57) for cold, moderate and hot climates, with acceptable indoor thermal (up to 54% of time) and visual (up to 83% of time) comfort.

Tharwat A., Schenck W.

Optimization algorithms are widely employed for finding optimal solutions in many applications. Stochastic optimization algorithms including nature-inspired optimization algorithms are simple and easy to implement, and this is the reason why there is a growing interest in this research area. Recently, many nature-inspired optimization algorithms have been proposed for solving many optimization problems. Moreover, with the aim of improving the performance of optimization algorithms, some modifications were applied such as combining different algorithms and employing some sampling techniques for replacing critical parameters in the optimization algorithms. This paper compares five different widely used PSO-style optimization algorithms to investigate if there is a significant difference between them or not. Theoretically, we explain different PSO-style algorithms and discuss the similarities and differences between them. Practically, a number of experiments were conducted to compare these algorithms. Theoretical analysis and practical results prove that there is not any significant difference between the PSO-style algorithms regarding their performance. • Nature-inspired optimization algorithms are used to solve optimization problems. • Many comparisons are presented to compare PSO-style optimization algorithms. • Under the same metaheuristic framework, the algorithms perform similarly.

Mokhtara C., Negrou B., Settou N., Settou B., Samy M.M.

This paper presents a methodology for optimal design of diesel/PV/wind/battery hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for the electrification of residential buildings in rural areas. Contrary to previous work, in this study, the effects of climate diversity and building energy efficiency on the size optimization of HRES are investigated. First, a multi-criteria spatial analysis trough a common geographical information system tool (ArcGIS 10.2) is undertaken to develop the renewable energy potential map for Algeria. Then, particle swarm optimization algorithm and e-constraint method were used to solve the multi-objective problem, which was formulated to minimize the cost of energy (COE) as the primary objective, while maximizing system reliability and a renewable fraction (RF). According to the resulting renewable potential map, seven zones are identified, and then seven locations have been selected (one from each zone) to execute the optimization of the proposed HRES. By considering low efficient buildings, photovoltaic/wind/diesel/battery is found the best configuration for Adrar and Tindouf, while photovoltaic/diesel/battery is obtained the best for the other locations. However, in the case of high-performance buildings, another optimal HRES configurations are obtained. The better one is acquired in Biskra and Tamenrast, which includes PV-Battery (100% renewable energy) and fulfilling COE of 0.21 $/kWh.

Ghosh A.

The inclusion of photovoltaic (PV) technologies add extra functionalities in a building by replacing the conventional structural material and harnessing benign electricity aesthetically from PV . Building integration (BI) and building attached/applied (BA) are the two techniques to include PV in a building. Currently, first, and second-generation PV technologies are already included for BIPV and BAPV application in the form of wall, roof, and window whereas third generation PVs are under rigours exploration to find their potential suitability. To alleviate enhanced temperature from both BIPV and BAPV, active and passive cooling can be introduced, however passive techniques are influential in trimming down the temperature for retrofit building . Shading from snow, dust cover and nearby building can be an obstacle for BIPV/BAPV application. The hydrophobic (icephobic) self-cleaning coating is suited for snow covering PV while hydrophobic and hydrophilic are both applicable for anti-soiling. Electric vehicles, autonomous switchable glazing, low heat loss glazing and lightweight BIPV are the different future application for PV in BI and BA integration. • A review about building integrated/attached photovoltaic is presented. • Different possible PV application in building has been discussed. • Issues associated with BIPV/BAPV system has been critically reviewed. • Potential future BIPV application has been introduced.

Behzadi A., Arabkoohsar A.

In this study, a novel design of ‘smart building energy systems’ is proposed. In the proposed system, solar photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) panels are integrated with a heat storage tank to supply a significant portion of the building’s heat and electricity demands. The system does not have any battery making it considerably cheaper and may have a two-way interaction with both of the local heat and electricity grids. In this way, the proposed system is strongly compatible with countries with both electricity and heat grids, e.g., Denmark. By such a system, not only the share of renewable energy in the national energy matrix may securely increase, but also the building will benefit the cheap, environmentally-friendly energy flows produced by its own. Considering the local weather data of a real smart building located in Western Denmark, the proposed building energy system is investigated. The results reveal that the system not only provides the entire annual domestic hot water building but also it generates 402.8 m3 hot water of 40 °C to be sold to the local ultralow-temperature district heating grid. With 2083 kWh electricity bought from the grid vs. 1938 kWh sold to that, the building’s yearly electricity cost is almost compensated.

Mehrtash M., Capitanescu F., Heiselberg P.K., Gibon T., Bertrand A.

The important focus of the energy strategy of the European Union relies on the concept of zero energy building (ZEB), which is, by definition, a building that roughly produces yearly as much renewable energy as it consumes. This article proposes an enhanced mixed-integer nonlinear programming model for optimal sizing of photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage systems to comply with the definition of a ZEB. A salient novel feature of the proposed model is that it factors in the environmental impacts, computed through rigorous life cycle assessment methodology, of buying electricity from the grid and manufacturing battery and PV systems. Furthermore, an adjustable parameter is introduced to make the model adaptive from the perspective of the building owner's willingness-to-pay for environmental impacts. The proposed model is then rigorously reformulated, managing to accumulate its nonlinearity in only one constraint per time interval. Eventually, the reformulated model is linearized to a mixed-integer linear programming model using the McCormick relaxation technique. The case study conducted on archetypal buildings in Luxembourg reveals that the proposed McCormick-based linear model is able to provide high accuracy results with reasonable computational effort.

Luo X.J., Oyedele L.O., Ajayi A.O., Akinade O.O.

Buildings are one of the significant sources of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission in urban areas all over the world. Lighting control and building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) are two effective measures in reducing overall primary energy consumption and carbon emission during building operation. Due to the complex energy nature of the building, accurate day-ahead prediction of heating, cooling, lighting loads and BIPV electrical power production is essential in building energy management. Owing to the changing metrological conditions, diversity and complexity of buildings, building energy load demands and BIPV electrical power production is highly variable. This may lead to poor building energy management, extra primary energy consumption or thermal discomfort. In this study, three machine learning-based multi-objective prediction frameworks are proposed for simultaneous prediction of multiple energy loads. The three machine learning techniques are artificial neural network, support vector regression and long-short-term-memory neural network. Since heating, cooling, lighting loads and BIPV electrical power production share similar affecting factors, it is computational time saving to adopt the proposed multi-objective prediction framework to predict multiple building energy loads and BIPV power production. The ANN-based predictive model results in the smallest mean absolute percentage error while SVM-based one cost the shortest computation time.

Mbungu N.T., Naidoo R.M., Bansal R.C., Siti M.W., Tungadio D.H.

• Present an overview of the grid-connected sustainable energy system for the urban sector. • Evaluate worldwide energy scenarios and the adding value of renewable energy resources. • Analyse different opportunities of implementing distributed energy resources, PV system and energy storage system, for an optimal dynamic behaviour scheme. • Detail the future perspective of using distributed energy resources connected to the utility grid based on the smart grid environment. This paper presents an overview of the integration of renewable energy resources in the urban sector. The article also describes the current global energy demand and growth challenges that the world is currently facing. The literature survey on the global energy scenario and renewable energy integration, which mainly involves solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage systems (BESS), is presented. The paper also addresses the different contexts of using renewable energy resources (RERs) and grid-connected applications. It develops the concept of PV energy storage integration in commercial building applications. Since the common RERs such as wind and solar vary according to seasonal and geographic locations, an outline of the energy storage system that provides a platform for optimal use of RERs is also presented. This structure refers to their ability and dynamic structure that can combine with the renewable power generation to maximise the use of RERs and to ensure the total energy supply to the load. It was observed that the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) which are connected to the grid is beneficial when the PV and energy storage system (ESS) are smartly mixed with the utility grid. The primary purpose of this energy mix is to assist in improving the dynamic performance of any electrical network operating in a commercial building setup. Thus, this research work analyses the possibility of designing dynamic behaviour for energy management for commercial building applications in South Africa.

Reddy P., Gupta M.V., Nundy S., Karthick A., Ghosh A.

The photovoltaic (PV) system is one of the most promising technologies that generate benevolent electricity. Therefore, fossil fuel-generated electric power plants, that emit an enormous amount of greenhouse gases, can be replaced by the PV power plant. However, due to its lower efficiency than a traditional power plant, and to generate equal amount of power, a large land area is required for the PV power plant. Also, transmission and distribution losses are intricate issues for PV power plants. Therefore, the inclusion of PV into a building is one of the holistic approaches which reduce the necessity for such large land areas. Building-integrated and building attached/applied are the two types where PV can be included in the building. Building applied/attached PV(BAPV) indicates that the PV system is added/attached or applied to a building, whereas, building integrated PV (BIPV) illustrates the concept of replacing the traditional building envelop, such as window, wall, roof by PV. In India, applying PV on a building is growing due to India’s solar mission target for 2022. In 2015, through Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, India targeted to achieve 100 GW PV power of which 40 GW will be acquired from roof-integrated PV by 2022. By the end of December 2019, India achieved 33.7 GW total installed PV power. Also, green/zero energy/and sustainable buildings are gaining significance in India due to rapid urbanization. However, BIPV system is rarely used in India which is likely due to a lack of government support and public awareness. This work reviewed the status of BIPV/BAPV system in India. The BIPV window system can probably be the suitable BIPV product for Indian context to reduce the building’s HVAC load.

Luo Y., Zhang L., Liu Z., Yu J., Xu X., Su X.

Net zero energy buildings (NZEBs) are the future direction of architectures as well as the guideline to counter-act with energy issues. In this study, we proposed a new concept of “double zero” for building envelope, in which the “first zero” means zero heat gain/heat loss through building envelopes and the “second zero” means net zero energy consumption to fulfill the “first zero”. By setting the goal of “double zero”, a new compound building envelope system was proposed with integration of photovoltaic (PV), thermoelectric (TE) modules, and battery system with envelope structure. The “first zero” is realized by TE cooling/heating using power from PV or battery to control the inward heat flux. The “second zero” is made by model predictive control (MPC) of power flow and battery capacity optimization. A system model was established with combination of analytical and numerical methods, which was validated against experimental data in both summer and winter conditions. The study results suggested that the system is highly adaptive to different climate zones for realizing the “first zero” even with non-optimized configurations. It was found that the system can realize 72–92% energy saving in cold region, 88–100% in mixed zone, and totally 100% in cooling dominant zone, compared with a massive wall as a reference. The net energy consumption maps are produced based on massive simulations and the zero energy line can be identified as an important guideline for implementing “double zero” in building envelopes under different operation years.

Tumminia G., Guarino F., Longo S., Aloisio D., Cellura S., Sergi F., Brunaccini G., Antonucci V., Ferraro M.

The concept of Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB), as a grid-connected building that generates as much energy as it uses over a given period, has been developing through policies and research agendas during the last decade as a contribution towards the decarbonization of the building sector. However, since the most applicable and widely used renewable energy supply options are non-programmable, the large-scale NZEBs diffusion into the existing power grids can seriously affect their stability having a relapse on operation costs and environmental impacts. In this context, the study aims at performing the design of the energy systems to be used in the case-study through a wide numbers of point of views, including the grid interaction, global warming potential, and different design alternatives such as using fuel cells and renewable energy generation systems and drawing lessons learned to be saved for similar buildings. A novel approach for developing for NZEBs, combining load match and grid interaction indicators with an environmental impact indicator, is proposed. The proposed design approach allows for the quantification of the power grid interaction and environmental impact (in terms of Global Warming Potential) aiming to find trade-offs between the opposing tendencies of building energy performances and the need to limit the embodied carbon within building envelope and systems. The design approach has been used to investigate the performances of a NZEB prototype with the aim to explore the effectiveness of the solution sets used in the current design (only Photovoltaic system) and plan different solutions (batteries and fuel cells system) for the future ones. For the base case, even though the overall PV energy generation (8069 kWhe) in a year surpasses the electricity consumption (5290 kWhe), on a yearly base only the 29% of the PV generation is used on-site. Hence, the assessed indicators show clearly how installing a PV system merely able to cover the energy uses on a yearly net base (or even slightly oversized) will have stress implications on the power grid. On the other hand, the use of batteries at the building scale largely decreases the reliance on power grid when not programmable renewable sources are present. Moreover, if coupled to the right size of the on-site generation systems, the storage system could increases the environmental benefits arising from the renewable energy technologies (the GHG emission reaches its minimum value of 0.92·103 kg CO2eq/year, with a reduction of the 50.4% if compared to the base case) for a storage capacity of 20 kWh and a PV system nominal power of 4.56 kW). Fuel cells guarantee a good load match at high energy efficiency, furthermore, a high installed power of fuel cells is not required to obtain high load cover factor values. On the other hand, since the specific CO2eq emission per unit of energy of the fuel cells are high, the CO2eq emissions are always greater than those of the base case if the system is equipped with a fuel cell system. Therefore, future research will have to focus on the eco-design of fuel cells with to reduce environmental impacts of these systems in a life cycle perspective.