Economic Performance of Net-Zero Energy Community under Reward-Penalty Mechanism Considering PV System Reliability

Economic performance of net-zero energy building/community (ZEB/ZEC) is an important factor that affects potential investors' decision on installing renewable energy systems (RES). A reward-penalty mechanism (RPM) is proposed for accelerating the development of zero energy communities, which is developed without considering the reliability effect from RES generation. However, an investigation is deserved for the reliability effect of RES on building economic performance. A case study is therefore conducted based on an assumed community consisting of 20 family houses, in which the electricity load was collected by the smart meter for more than one year. The results show that the proposed RPM works efficiently under an ideal condition, while the costs of the community and its buildings are greatly increased when the effect of PV system reliability is considered. Specifically, the total cost of the community under 1.0ZEC design is 5 005 USD/yr in the first year, which increases to 11 341 USD/yr in the 25th year. By contrast, the total cost of the community under 1.2ZEC design is 5 243 USD/yr in the first year and increases to 9 607 USD/yr in the 25th year. It is believed that the results of this study can provide a progressive perspective for scheme makers and building owners in terms of its economic benefit. Development of enhanced RPM by considering system reliability will be investigated in our future work.