How to design and simulate a sustainable building in UAE

Explore sustainable and zero energy buildings in the UAE, highlighting energy efficiency, envelope design, eco-friendly materials, water and waste management, indoor air quality, and nearly zero to positive energy types.

Explore global green building rating systems such as breeam, leed, well, edge, fitwel, dgnb, casbee, and green star, and UAE regulations estidama, al safat, and barjeel shaping sustainable construction.

Discover life cycle assessment as a scientific method to measure a building’s environmental impacts from material extraction to demolition, using EPDs and LCC to inform sustainable design and certifications.

Explore the building envelope—floors, roofs, walls, windows, and doors—and heat transfer modes, conduction, radiation, and convection, and how computational fluid dynamics simulations optimize comfort and energy in the UAE.

Explore energy behavior in buildings by analyzing passive and active energy consumption, design choices, thermal bridges, air leakage, and high-performance insulation, glazing, and shading in UAE.

Explore modular construction as a factory-built, offsite method that cuts CO2, energy use, and waste while enabling rapid, controlled assembly for sustainable UAE buildings.

Explore the fundamentals of solar photovoltaic power systems, from the photovoltaic effect and silicon cells to modules, inverters, and grid-connected design for sustainable UAE buildings.

Design and optimize an optimum PV power plant through pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, considering site data, topography, and environmental and social considerations for reliable energy yield.

Predict the energy yield of a PV power plant by modeling irradiance on the tilted plane, ambient temperature, and losses with hourly to subhourly simulations using site data.

Analyze losses in a pv plant from air pollution, soiling, shading, incident angle, low irradiance, module temperature, quality and mismatch, inverter and cable losses, grid unavailability, using 3d shading modeling.

Balance megawatt scale solar plant design by optimizing losses, layout, tilt, and module configuration to maximize annual energy yield and revenue under site-specific irradiance, shading, and latitude.

Explore how solar radiation and pv panel tilt affect energy yield. Explain azimuth as the angle between the panel's vertical plane and south, and tilt as the angle to horizontal.

Compare fixed and tracking mounting structures for solar photovoltaic installations—ground, roof, carport, and building-integrated setups—with single or double axis trackers, galvanized aluminum frames, row spacing, and temperature effects.

Apply sizing and design fundamentals for a Dubai solar system by using diwa regulation, 1.2 dc/ac ratio, space checks, PV capacity, and string sizing.

Assess the DEWA regulation that sets a maximum DC/AC ratio of 1.2 for sustainable building design in the UAE. Analyze how the DC/AC ratio affects AC output.

Explore the i-v curve to understand current and voltage behavior, including isc, imp, voc, and vmp, and how power drops to zero when voltage or current is zero.

Explore Virginia Tech house from Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018, analyzing architecture, building integrated photovoltaics, performance, with emphasis on cube design, orientation, shading, and structural insulated panels reducing cooling loads.

Baity Kool House demonstrates building integrated photovoltaics in a 78 m² positive energy home. BiGlass and biomimetic PV drive continuous production.

Explore the Sharjah house case from Solar Decathlon Middle East 2021, a compact positive energy house with a double-skin facade, sun-tracking roof, and BIPV.

Explore cool roof experiment at the University of Sharjah, testing white cool barrier paint with photovoltaic panels to reduce heat, lower indoor temperature, and boost PV efficiency by 3%.

Design a compact UAE building with an East-West axis to minimize heat transfer, place living areas north, and apply ventilated double-skin facades with BIPV to cut energy use.

Apply seven-step design framework for sustainable buildings in Dubai, covering site analysis, passive design, materials. Explore off-site construction, prototype development, and on-grid solar PV sizing to compare consumption with production.

Design a simple sustainable house for a newly married couple in Dubai's Crystal Lagoon by conducting site analysis, optimizing energy consumption through geometry, wind, shading, and solar production.

Design and simulate residential energy use in Dubai with Cove Tool, evaluating envelope u-values, shading, solar panels, and hvac to optimize kilowatt hours per year and CO2 against 2030 targets.

Use Pvsyst to simulate a grid-connected solar PV system for Dubai, configuring location, tilt, modules, inverter, losses, and 3D shading to estimate annual energy and performance ratio.