Net Zero Energy Design: A Guide for Commercial Architecture 1st Edition

This book's greatest strength is in it's comprehensive and detailed presentation of the foundation of NZED-- more so because the author didn't use 500 pages to accomplish this task.I've read this book cover to cover but because it is comprehensive and some of the areas of NZED are not very familiar I find myself reading it again and absorbing more with each pass. Despite having the book in hard cover format I also purchase the kindle version so I can reference many of the excellent charts and figures, found through the book.This may have been written primarily for architects but it is would be very informative for anyone involved sustainable building design and construction.

This book is a good starting point for someone just starting to dip their toe in the topic of energy efficient design, and an excellent snapshot of a point in time in the pursuit and promotion of net zero design. It packs in a huge number of topics, which is both a positive and a negative. As a jumping off point, to make the reader aware of many different technologies and strategies, this is an excellent resource. Where it's not so great is on any in-depth investigation of any of those technologies. It's a little bit scatter-shot in its approach. For instance in the chapter introducing energy efficient building systems it jumps ahead to a fairly involved discussion of DC micro-grids early in the chapter, long before it covers the basics of conventional systems. In using this in a teaching situation I found that the students needed a lot of additional basic information in order to understand what a DC micro-grid is, and what the conventional technology is, in order to understand why this would be beneficial. On the other hand, when covering the material of this book with an audience mostly made up of seasoned design professionals a great deal of the material was received as old-hat and very cursory. So it's difficult to pin-point who exactly this book is geared toward. It might be useful for young professionals with an architecture or engineering education but little experience - especially those studying for licensing exams. It also might be a good review for those who are a few years out of touch with the latest green technologies - although at this point this book is already a little long in the tooth on that front.The book contains many examples of energy efficient buildings and communities - I don't want to give the impression that it is solely a vehicle to promote one particular project. However, it does focus rather heavily on one particular building in Colorado, on which the author was one of the designers. This got a bit repetitive, and at times I didn't think this project was by any means the best example of the point that it was being used to illustrate. Sometimes it did seem that the author was stretching to use yet another photograph of this one project to illustrate the topic at hand, and that this was done at the expense both of clarity and of more worthy examples.It's a book that was worth reading, but not one I'm likely to return to as a resource, and also not one that's likely to stay relevant for long. In that sense it's one that I might have been better off borrowing from a library than purchasing.

I am completely happy with this book.One of the best Book I have studied about this topic and also I got it On time and with very well quality.

excellent resource

This book covers all aspects of net-zero energy building design. The book stresses process and integration (“systems thinking”) over any particular solution. Thus, rather than a reference book in which one would look up specific information, I think the book is best read from cover to cover. It would be a good textbook for an architecture or architectural engineering class. By working through the entire book a reader would come across some gems. One such gem is that sustainable buildings should be beautiful, because beauty is cherished by building owners and coveted by competitors. Another idea is that it is not only design, or attention to detail in construction, but equally operation of the building that makes it net zero.As an architect himself, the author has put the same care into the book as he would into a building: it is organized, well-written, and rich in photographs and graphics. The book has very few quantitative equations, but all of the technical issues regarding envelope, lighting and mechanical systems are included and explored in considerable detail. The book will interest and inform practitioners, but I think that educators will find it useful too because it defines terms and builds concepts from the ground up. The book would introduce a newcomer to the field to the details of the process by which net zero energy buildings are delivered, the details of procedures and systems to accomplish that, and it provides a really good overview of what organizations are active in this area and what each one is contributing.Although touched upon among the different definitions of net-zero, I think the discussion of “Energy Systems Integration” is lacking, and being the measures required for the “net” part of “net zero.” Energy Systems Integration including sizing of the utility circuit, network protection, configuration of substation, and other details, and the resulting ability of the utility circuit to absorb the solar power during the day and provide it back at night under a net-metering arrangement. There are limits to net-metering and technical and socioeconomic reasons that not every building can be “net”-zero energy without energy storage, and changes in the way utilities operate and recover cost.