Implementation of near Zero Energy House Design Parameter Case Study: Cluster Housing X in Tangerang, Banten

Shifting forward to sustainable concept of housing entitle a house to play a significant role by reducing the dependence on fossil based energy appliances among others. Thereby, environmental impact of a housing building, particularly CO 2 emissions, depends on the house overall design, including site planning, configuration, materials, construction, and operation where every aspect affected the house environmental performance. Nature has provide sufficient energy to tropical climate environment like Indonesia. Even so, economically viable cluster housing is the other issue that encounter high costs housing from energy efficient building such as the Near Zero Energy House (nZEH) due to high price of materials and equipment used. The objective of the research is to understand how nZEH design parameter has been implemented and give impacts on architectural form of housing design. This is an appropriate way to have data on net or near zero energy buildings implementation in cluster housing. In order to obtain this data, the research team needs to have comprehensive data from a case study such as plan, section and elevation of a house; thus to re-establish the connection with environmental performance. Since environmental performance is closely linked to occupation patterns of the building, therefore related data like average temperature and wind velocity (day-night) considered to be supporting data to this research. The research has conducted explorative and experimental activities, where knowledge of the design optimization of the building with a variety of methods has been used to obtain new ideas regarding the design optimization of the building to formulating near Zero Energy House (nZEH) concept that is practically affordable. Methods to deliver this study are qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative data is needed to validate design variables of Near Zero Energy House (nZEH) to suit the climatic conditions of Indonesia. The variables of this design will then be compared with the actual conditions on the ground in the area which is used as the location of survey points along with the concept of housing developers. The research instruments used in this study, among others: Checklist, Interview Form and Observation Log Book. Checklist used during the survey which listed the housing variables designs in hand to be compared with the housing concept from the developers in order to observe its implementation. Interview form and observation log book are also used in order to guide detail information from informants. Buildings that produce a surplus of energy over the year may be defined as energy-plus buildings and buildings that consume slightly more energy than they produce are called near-zero energy buildings (nZEB). To utilise either type of housing, it requires necessary strategies and solutions to reduce energy consumption for building and continuously providing energy from renewable sources. In recent years many of the tools produced energy conservation technology, but the use of these tools does not guarantee optimal energy savings. Near Zero Energy House technology is generally much more expensive than conventional buildings. nZEH technologies include natural lighting systems, solar PV, wind turbines, light emitting diode (LED), automatic HVAC systems, and others. Nevertheless, nZEH can save more energy and has lower operational and maintenance costs. Therefore, it is important to use analytical methods to determine the cost savings that occur during the life time of the building that will be analysed in this research using case study. According to the literature, comparison of the cost of construction, maintenance and operation of buildings, as well as the costs of doing business has a ratio of 1: 5: 200. From the case study conducted in this research, it was found that the cluster design housing X in Tangerang, Banten, are poorly incorporate the nZEH design parameter due to costly reasoning that impact to initial cost of the housing building. Among the design parameter which has been suggested are limited to passive design, fenestration, HVAC, lighting, and minor consideration to operation and maintenance.