Low-energy residential buildings in New Borg El Arab: Simulation and survey based energy assessment

This article discusses the design of a very low energy residential building, with regard to the climate ofNew Borg El Arab City (NBC). However, since the cost of a very energy efficient building can be high, twoinvestment scenarios, low (LIS) and high (HIS) investments, have been considered. In the first case, thedesign includes exclusively low cost solutions, while in the second case technologies commonly asso-ciated with Net zero houses are included. Both cases have been compared to a reference case, calledbusiness as usual (BaU), which refers to the minimum requirements of the Egyptian energy code. Thefinal energy consumption of LIS has been estimated around 15 kWh/m2, which is half of the final energyconsumption of the BaU building. Particularly interesting are the results of HIS: the final energy con-sumption varies from 5 kWh/m2to 1.48 kWh/m2and to 0.69 kWh/m2as the PV size increases. Very lowenergy and net zero energy buildings have been designed in line with the local context, using envelopesolutions to lower their energy needs and renewable systems to achieve a near zero or a negative finalenergy balance.