Potential for retrofitting a federal building in the UAE to net zero electricity building (nZEB)

Demand Side Management of the building sector has attracted great attention in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, the challenge lies in the existing buildings that form the majority of the built environment. Therefore, retrofitting the existing stock has become a priority and many initiatives have emerged to speed up the pace within the retrofit market. This paper aims to assess the potential of retrofitting an existing federal office building to a net zero electricity building through a holistic retrofit approach. Several passive and active measures are implemented in order to achieve this goal including the integration of different grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems. The commercially available Integrated Energy Solution – Virtual Reality (IES-VE) building energy simulation software is used to evaluate the impact of all the implemented strategies on reducing electricity consumption in order to highlight the optimal scenario prior to introducing the PV systems. In this particular study, the implementation of active measures has proven to be more effective in reducing energy demand than passive measures. The passive strategies reduced electricity demand by 14.7%, whilst active measures reduced electricity demand by 63.2%. A PV system was able to cover the reduced energy demand resulting in a net Zero Electricity Building (nZEB).