oa Passive House Design Alternatives for Labor Camps in Modern AgroIndustrial Communities in Qatar

The consumption of electricity in residential buildings exceeds 20% in Qatar and can go up to 50% in other hot countries like Kuwait. The air-conditioning systems in hot countries like Qatar consumes around 60–80% of the total energy demand in buildings. This triggers researchers and industry experts in the built environment to explore new avenues towards reducing the cooling load on a building and study influential factors to enhance energy efficiency in buildings in such extreme climatic conditions. The carbon foot print of buildings can be reduced by reducing the cooling load through passive building design, using high efficiency equipment and incorporating renewable energy technologies such as solar systems, air source heat pumps, wind generators and ground source heat pumps are few to name that are widely used among many other available renewable technologies. The focus of this research work is on the Passivehouse building design incorporating solar hybrid Photovoltaic Thermal collectors (PV/T) as a source of renewable electricity and solar hot water for domestic use. Two different designs of a residential building for Modern Agro-Industrial Communities in Qatar were considered i.e. Pyramidal Shaped Building and Square Shaped Building. 3D energy models were created for both type of buildings using the IES software (Integrated Environmental Solutions) in virtual environment and thermal analysis was carried out. For the same building type, orientation and structure, two different criteria were applied to the model i.e. Passivehouse design vs. Conventional design. Pyramid shaped buildings are more stable but tend to cost more to construct when compared to traditional buildings. The sloping external walls tend to gain more solar energy and daylight through windows installed on the external walls. This provides an opportunity for solar panels installation on the external walls. The solar gain through external windows can be reduced to a minimum by effective solar shading and the daylight harvesting system can further reduce the artificial lighting gain inside the building. The results show that the passive house design of a building can save more than 70% of the cooling plant load, the as installed plant size and associated infrastructure. This will also considerably reduce the annual operational and maintenance cost of the building with just an extra 15% in construction cost. The cost analysis of passive house in comparison with a conventional house was carried out by QGBC (Qatar Green Building Council). In a nutshell this research work demonstrates how buildings' cooling load and carbon foot print can be reduced by effective solar shading, lower infiltration rates (air tight building design), highly insulated building fabric, natural ventilation, daylight harvesting system (that can help reduce artificial lighting gain inside the building) and heat recovery system.