Investigation of building energy autonomy in the sahelian environment

In this study, the energy generation of a set of photovoltaic panels is compared with the energy load of a building in order to analyse its autonomy in the sahelian environment when taking into account, the orientation, the insulation and the energy transfer optimisation of its windows. The Type 56 TRNSYS multizone building model is utilized for the energy load simulation and the Type 94 model of the same code enables the coupling of photovoltaic (PV) panels with the building. Without insulation, the PV energy generation represents 73.52 and 111.79% of the building electric energy load, respectively for poly-crystalline and mono-crystalline panels. For the same PV characteristics and when we insulate the roof and the floor, the energy generation increases to represent successively 121.09 and 184.13%. In the meantime, for building without insulation and with insulate the roof, the floor and 2 cm insulated walls, the energy consumption ratios decrease respectively from 201.13 to 105.20 kWh/m2/year. The investigations finally show that it is even possible to generate excess energy (positive energy building) and reduce the number and incident surface area of the PV panels if we conjugate the previous model with building passive architectural design mode (orientation, solar protection ...).