Analysis of critical climate related factors for the application of zero-energy homes in Saudi Arabia

Farajallah Alrashed and Muhammad Asif

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2015, vol. 41, issue C, 1395-1403

Abstract: The Saudi construction industry is led by housing sector that imposes enormous energy and environmental challenges for the country. The housing sector is growing rapidly and is responsible for 52% of the total national electricity consumption. In order to promote sustainable development it is vital for Saudi Arabia to adopt sustainable housing practices such as zero-energy homes (ZEHs). The concept is new to Saudi Arabia though a number of ZEHs have already been developed around the world. One of the most significant challenges facing the application of ZEHs in Saudi Arabia is uncertainty about their adaptability in local climate. The present work aims to investigate this uncertainty, mainly focusing on the four climatic factors related to the application of ZEHs including air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and global solar radiation. This is fulfilled by reviewing climatic condition of Saudi Arabia and the concept of ZEHs and examining some of these homes built across the globe in climates similar to the Saudi climatic zones. In this respect, five ZEHs globally developed in climates matching with the five main Saudi climatic zones have been investigated as case studies. A typical-virtual home has been designed on the basis of a questionnaire survey. With the help of the Integrated Environmental Solution 〈Virtual Environment〉 software a modelling exercise has been carried out to compare its energy performance at the five selected international locations with their corresponding Saudi locations. This comparison is based upon the maximum and mean power demand. Furthermore, to cater for the differences in climatic conditions between the Saudi locations and their counterpart global locations, a sensitivity analysis for the studied locations has been undertaken for the four climate factors.

Keywords: Zero-energy home; Building energy simulation; Sensitivity analysis; Saudi housing; Saudi climatic zones; Renewable energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032114008041
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:41:y:2015:i:c:p:1395-1403

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2014.09.031

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().