Retrofitting School Buildings towards Attaining Net Zero-Energy Buildings

Abstract

Educational sector in Egypt needs a great interest; in order to update educational buildings especially school buildings. The existing school buildings represent both the problem and the solution, because dealing with existing school buildings would reflect directly on the current energy consumption condition. Private schools depend heavily on air conditioners to achieve thermal comfort to students without paying attention to passive design strategies, and this leads to high energy consumption and increased carbon dioxide emission. The objective of this thesis is to propose a methodology that can be used to convert private school buildings in Egypt from high energy demand into net-zero energy buildings Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) construct is the future aim for saving energy. NZEB concept has risen in worldwide discussions targeting efficient built environment. The research discusses the combination between two strategies: energy efficiency retrofitting techniques to reduce energy consumption, and renewable energy systems to generate enough energy, which would result in an annual net zero energy. Design Builder simulation software is used to test the feasibility of combining these two strategies in an existing school building located in the Fifth Settlement, New Cairo. The simulation goes through three stages, the first stage concludes determine the actual energy performance and the user‘s electric consumption (base case study), to identify the maximum energy consumption kWh. In the second stage three energy efficiency retrofitting techniques such as; insulation and glazing in the building envelope, and retrofitting of lighting systems, are investigated in the first stage aiming