Cost Optimum Design of Zero-Energy Residential Building

The continuous growth of population in sub-urban areas leads to increasing demand for mid-rise housing. Recent studies found that greenhouse gas emission in Indonesia continues to escalate at an alarming rate, and housing development is considered as one of the greenhouse gas contributors. Zero-Energy Residential Building, a highly energy efficient and low carbon housing design concept, is regarded as the answer for this environmental issue. Application of Zero-Energy Residential Building concept can reach almost zero sites electrical consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emission since this concept utilizes clean and renewable energy sources, e.g. solar cell, to generate electricity independently. However, this design concept has not been implemented widely since the utilization of solar panels, and other energy conservation components are still too expensive. This study is proposed to find out an optimum combination of design parameters that contribute to cost optimization housing design using sequential search algorithm. Comprehensive study literature and experiment using software are applied in this research. Hence, using the parameter combination in designing a mid-rise dense housing and Zero-Energy Building concept can generate optimum life cycle cost performance. As a result, the study concludes that the life cycle cost of optimized mid-rise Zero-Energy Building is better than the conventional mid-rise housing with annual electrical cost saving up to 98 percent.