Until recently, most planners of public communities (military garrisons, universities, etc.) addressed energy systems for new facilities on an individual facility basis without consideration of community-wide goals relevant to energy sources, renewables, storage, or future energy generation needs. Because building retrofits of public buildings typically do not address energy needs beyond the minimum code requirements, it can be difficult if not impossible to achieve community-level targets on a building-by-building basis. In today’s resource-constrained environment, public communities (including those of Ministries of Defence, University, hospital campuses and residential neighborhoods) are looking for creative ways to drive additional efficiencies in energy use and reduce associated costs. Large coordinated efforts are needed to gain synergy between different energy initiatives and future planned projects to maximize energy use and cost reduction.

Building-centric planning also falls short of delivering community-level resilience. For example, many building code requirements focus on hardening to specific threats, but in a multi-building community only a few of these buildings may be mission-critical. Furthermore, hardening is only one aspect of resilience. Recovery and adaptation should be addressed as effective energy resilience solutions. Over the past two decades, the frequency and duration of regional power outages from weather, manmade events, and aging infrastructure have increased. Major disruptions of electric and thermal energy have degraded critical mission capabilities and caused significant economic impacts at military installations. There is a need to develop a highly resilient “backbone” of energy systems to maintain critical mission and service operations effectively during such extended power outages over a range of emerging scenarios.

Significant additional energy savings and increased energy security can be realized by considering holistic solutions for the heating, cooling and power needs of communities – comprising collections of buildings. The status quo in planning and execution of energy-related projects will not support attainment of current energy goals (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive [EPBD] in Europe and 10CFR-433 in the United States) or the minimization of costs for providing energy security.

Experience gained from Annex 51 and various demonstration projects using the Net Zero Planner (NZP Tool™) developed by the US Army Engineering Research and Development Center showed that additional work must be done: (1) the addition of new building types, especially those specific to public communities that will be addressed by this Annex (e.g., military installations, universities) and (2) the development of a database of energy efficiency building models that comply with the current EPBD requirements. There is also a need to add advanced energy supply, distribution, and energy storage systems for district heating and cooling for the standalone campus or as an integrated part of a nearby city. In addition, there is a need for integrated thermal distribution modeling tools to be incorporated into various planning tools such as NZP ToolTM or CityGML to make them usable for a broader spectrum of scenarios. Finally, resilience-relevant performance criteria for buildings and systems are necessary to address how alternative designs perform during high-consequence scenarios.

EBC Annex 73 will summarize the state-of-the-art technologies and concepts for community-wide energy master planning while considering both power and heating/cooling needs. Furthermore, the project intends to advance the integration of various new energy master planning tools and strategies by standardizing data models and developing new software services for meeting current and future energy efficiency (site and source) and energy security goals. It will research and integrate innovative energy supply and energy distribution strategies (including information on their performance and costs), which will culminate in a complete community energy modeling tool. Finally, this project will enhance modeling tools to address resilience of energy supply solutions, integrate a capability for computation of thermal and electrical network characteristics (capacity, losses, and cost), and provide sufficient visualization of different scenarios to support resilience decisions without significant post processing

The project will be built on and or be developed in collaboration with the following International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme (EBC) Annexes:

• Annex 51 with regards to energy master planning concepts and case studies of energy efficient communities, which will provide information for Subtasks B and D.
• Annex 60 with regards to next-generation computational tools that allow building and energy grids to be designed and operated as integrated, robust, and performance-based Systems.
• Annex 61 with regards to optimization of energy use in renovated buildings and business and financial models for building and building cluster renovation, supporting Subtasks A and F.
• Annex 63 with regards to its activities related to legal framework of spatial planning for implementation of net zero energy (NZE) communities in the public sector.
• Annex 67 with regards to interaction between building energy demand and supply, power grids, and the availability and self-sustainable use of renewable energies. The modeling approaches set up in this Annex can be of value for Subtask A.
• Annex 70 with regards to assessing energy use in real buildings, which will support Subtask A benchmarking activities.

Annex 75 in regards to:

• Methodology-guidance for establishing trade-offs between EE and RE measures
• Exchange of information on first and installation cost of technologies and description of these Technologies
• Information exchange for case studies that include residential building types
• Energy master planning concepts
• Joint workshop focusing on methodologies and case studies.

• Implementation of integrated planning and building design and community scale methods and the use of advanced mechanical, lighting, and building envelope systems (EBC)
• Promoting cost effective solutions for district heating and cooling systems with cogeneration and thermal storage as a way to improve energy security of public-owned communities and showcase technologies leading to energy independence and a low carbon society (DHC)
• Demonstration of the use of solar energy integrated into district heating and cooling systems and solar-based renovation of the existing building stock (SHC)
• This integrative approach will enable public authorities in a decision-making process to take a holistic approach to community master planning, and specifically, to energy master planning to meet different energy goals, i.e., energy resilience and independence, and energy cost and carbon footprint reduction, in a Life Cycle Cost (LCC) effective way.

Scope

The Scope of the Annex is the decision-making process and computer-based modeling tools for achieving net zero energy resilient public-owned communities (military garrisons, universities, hospital campuses etc.).

Objectives

The objectives of this Annex are to:

• Assess existing case studies and develop representative building energy benchmarks
• Develop a database of energy utilization indexes (EUI) of Public, Academic, and Armed Forces building types
• Develop Energy Targets: definitions, matrix, monetary values
• Summarize, develop and catalog representative building models by building use type, including mixed-use buildings, applicable to national public communities/military garrisons building stocks
• Summarize, develop and catalog representative energy supply Scenarios
• Develop Guidance for Energy Master Planning
• Develop functional modeling tool to facilitate the Net Zero Energy Master Planning Process, which will enhance currently used building modeling tools to address resiliency of energy supply solutions, integrate a capability for computation of thermal and electrical network characteristics (capacity, losses, and cost), and offer sufficient visualization of different scenarios to support resilience decisions without significant post processing.
• Collect and describe business and financial aspects and legal requirements and constraints for NZE master planning for public communities in participating countries
• Provide dissemination and training in participating countries and the end users, mainly decision makers, community planners and energy managers and other market partners in the Proceedings and work of the Annex Subtasks.

Target Audiences

The Energy Master Plan (EMP) Guidelines and enhancements of modeling tools, best practices and case studies will support different user groups and facilitate communication among them. The target audiences for the project outcomes include participants in the decision-making process, specifically:

Decision makers, planners, building owners, architects, engineers and energy managers of public-owned and operated communities, for example:

• National Armed Forces through their Infrastructure Components, military garrisons,
• University and high school campuses,
• Hospitals and housing, which are responsible for all costs related to new construction, renovation and O&M.

Means

To accomplish these objectives, participants will carry out research and development in the following six Subtasks (A, B, C, D, E, and F) summarized in Table 3  and Figure 1:

Table 3. Annex 73 Subtask Objectives

Subtasks
Subtask A	Collection and Evaluation of Input Data for Energy Master Plan (EMP)
Subtask B	Collection of Existing Case Studies and implementation of pilot studies.
Subtask C	Description of existing and innovative technologies, architecture and calculation tools for performance of central energy systems (power and thermal).
Subtask D	Develop Guidance for Net Zero Energy Master Planning
Subtask E	Develop a functional modeling tool to facilitate the Net Zero Energy Resilient Communities Master Planning Process
Subtask F	Business, legal and financial aspects of Net Zero Energy Master Planning.

 

Figure 1. Structure of the Annex 73.