A zero energy concept building for the Mediterranean climate

The Mediterranean climate distinguishes for a mild heating season and a hot (and usually dry) cooling season. All along the year solar radiation is plentiful and the daily range of temperature during the summer is large, due to dry and clear conditions. This environment allowed to design and build a zero energy concept building (a detached single family house) on the basis of passive heating and cooling technologies, supported, when required, by short time active conditioning. The design process was optimized by extensive energy simulations, resulting in an optimal energy balance and favorable thermal comfort conditions along the year. The building is instrumented with an accurate building automation control system, and a number of sensors for a detailed energy and environmental monitoring. The monitoring equipment and framework, have been devised to support further detailed studies to improve the design concept and to provide accurate and comprehensive data to the scientific community. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).