Implementation of Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB)
Prototype with Renewable Energy Integration
K. Rushikesh Babu
Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
National Institute of Technology Goa, India
Email: rushikesh.nitg@gmail.com
Abstract—This paper develops a Net Zero Energy Building
(NZEB) prototype with renewable energy integration
applications. Most of the power generated by the utilities is
consumed by the domestic loads and with urbanization; energy
demand is continuously increasing in developing countries like
India. To meet the ever growing demand, generation has to be
increased and thereby transmitted over long distances which
results in increased system losses reducing the overall system
efficiency and reliability. Generation addition by non-renewable
sources would increase the greenhouse gas emissions caused by
the additional consumption of fossil fuels. Towards addressing
this problem, there is a lot of scope for researchers to increase the
overall system efficiency and reliability and also to preserve the
fossil fuels for future generations. One solution is by adopting Net
Zero Energy Building (NZEB) concept which includes
integration of renewable energy generation (like solar), intelligent
controllers, Internet of Things (IoT) etc., for home energy
automation. NZEB concept ensures that the loads of a building
are controlled in such a way that the net energy consumed from
the utility grid over a period of time (monthly/annually) will be
close to zero. The net energy is the difference of the energy
imported from grid to the energy exported to grid over a period
of time. In this paper the real time NZEB prototype is developed
with appropriate assumptions using wireless sensors to achieve
home automation with IoT.
Keywords—Net zero energy building (NZEB), arduino
controller, Internet of Things (IoT)
I. INTRODUCTION
IN India, the energy consumption by domestic loads are
almost 30% and it is increasing annually by 8% of power
generation, which is due to increase in the urbanization.
Almost 80% of the energy is generated by the burning of fossil
fuels (coal and natural gas), around 17% from renewable
energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.,) and 3% from
nuclear energy to meet the demand of industrial, traction and
commercial loads [1] and [2]. This huge consumption of fossil
fuels cause the emission of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide,
methane and nitrous oxide) which further increase global
warming. So, it is necessary to conserve the fossil fuels and
reduce the global warming by going for renewable energy
generation like solar and wind power generation [3].
978-1-5090-6255-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
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C. Vyjayanthi
Dept. of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
National Institute of Technology Goa, India
Email: vyju80@gmail.com
In order to achieve breakthrough solutions to this problem,
it’s necessary to integrate RES to design the buildings of the
future and make them Net Energy Zero Buildings (NZEB) [4].
In order to store the produced energy from the solar, energy
storage capability should be high enough and it should be
controlled by its State of Charge (SOC) and the load demand.
Typically, a high efficiency grid tie Battery Energy Storage
System (BESS) with Bi-directional converter is used to store
the energy as well as to supply the power to the grid and the
load [5].
We know that residential buildings consume electrical
power from utility grid. As the consumption increases the cost
of energy bill per month also increases. If each residential
building generates electric power by Renewable Energy
Sources (RES) such as roof-top solar and/or a micro wind
turbine, it will be able to meet its own demand. Reliability can
be further increased by introducing Battery Energy Storage
System (BESS). As most of the domestic loads are AC in
nature, the DC power from solar will be converted to AC
power using a converter. This generated power will meet its
demand and the remaining excess power will be sent back to
the utility. Sometimes, the generated RES power may be less
than the demand, then the building will draw the remaining
power from the utility grid. In this way by exporting and
importing power from the grid, the net power consumption
from the utility grid can be made zero using NZEB concept.
Further, money may be earned exporting the excess power
generated by RES at our own premises [6]. This NZEB
concept implementation requires an intelligent controller like
Arduino (running an efficient Energy Management algorithm)
equipped with sensors and cloud storage facility to control and
store data [7].
Home automation includes controlling of fans, appliances,
lights, security devices, etc., which are used to improve
security, energy efficiency and comfort level for residential,
commercial and industrial applications. Home automation is
useful for specially challenged and old age people and it also
increases the quality of life. It offers the feasibility of
scheduling ON/OFF and controlling of each and every
electrical appliance [8]. In India, by 2030 all the buildings are
expected to be constructed with NZEB, under the project
USAID ECO III in association with BEE (Bureau of Energy
Efficiency). In order to achieve this target, a great level of
research and development needs to be done [9] and [10].
2017 IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP)
In this paper, few possible ways of energy management will
be focused on to enable a NZEB technology. Subsequently,
monitoring and controlling using an intelligent controller
based building energy management system is also
implemented. The solar power generation and load variations
over a day are assumed and fed to a controller and are further
analyzed for incorporating a NZEB. Complete communication
control through wired/wireless medium [11] shall be
facilitated to ensure that all the devices connected to the
intelligent controller are optimally switched ON/OFF on real-
time basis.
II. PROPOSED NZEB COMPONENTS
The block diagram shown in Fig.1 represents the NZEB
implementation set-up components which contain a PV power
generation (Pgn), electric grid, domestic loads (Pd), wireless
sensors and an intelligent controller.
Fig. 1. NZEB with Home Automation using IoT
A. Power Generation
The electrical power can be generated by renewable energy
sources like solar and wind which are intermittent in nature. In
this paper, solar power generation is used as a renewable
energy generation because it has the advantages like free
availability in nature, life span is more, eco-friendly, less
maintenance and so on. Since the solar irradiance reaching the
earth’s surface varies with respect to time, the available power
generation also varies as shown in Fig.2.
Fig. 2. Solar power generation over a day
The following PV generation pattern is assumed for various
irradiance levels:
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a) A maximum power of 250W is generated by the solar PV
panel during afternoon time.
b) A minimum power of 50W is generated by the solar PV
panel during early morning and night time.
c) During morning and evening time the solar power
generation is around 160W.
d) Entire day is divided into five sections and each section is
studied as cases as case 1 ... case 5.
e) The loads are divided into priority and non-priority loads.
B. Electric Grid
The electrical power generation by solar is intermittent in
nature. In order to meet the continuously varying domestic
loads, solar power generation alone may not be sufficient and
therefore power is also taken from utility grid. The grid will
supply the load, when the power generation by solar is less
than the load demand and can also send back power to the grid
when the power generation by solar is more than the load
demand. The net power exported or imported from the grid,
decides the net energy consumption and thereby the electricity
bill. To make the electricity bill zero over a period of time
(monthly/annually) it is very much necessary to control the
load consumption by comparing the available power
generation to the load power. This NZEB concept also makes
a self-employer sell the excess power generation to the grid
after meeting his/her load demand.
C. Power Consumption
Loads are classified into industrial, commercial and
domestic type. The major loads in commercial and domestic
sector are lighting loads. The domestic loads considered by
divided into priority (PL) and non-priority loads (NPL). The
priority loads like fans, lights, television, fridge, etc are kept
ON independent of the available power generation by the solar
but the nonpriority loads like washing machine, electric
geyser, air conditioner, etc are kept ON/OFF as per the
requirement to achieve the NZEB concept.
D. Arduino as a Controller
The Arduino Uno is used as a microcontroller board based
on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output pins (D0-
D13) of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs, 6 analog inputs
(A0-A5), a reset button, an on-board resonator, and holes for
mounting pin headers.
It can be powered and programmed via USB. Additionally
it has an adapter slot which can handle input voltage up to 9V
which it then steps down to 5V and 3.3V. The ATmega328
has 32 KB flash memory in which the code is dumped, out of
which 0.5 KB is used by the bootloader. A 2 kB of SRAM and
1kBs of EEPROM are also available which can be accessed by
calling the EEPROM library. It is an open source platform
both for software and hardware development and it can be
programmed using Arduino IDE (Software).
The Arduino UNO has 14 digital pins (6 pins can also be
used to generate PWM signals) and it can be used as input or
output by calling certain functions predefined in the Arduino
IDE. It also has 6 analog input pins those are routed to the
microcontroller via an analog to digital converter (ADC) and
2017 IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP)
these are useful for taking input from analog sensor values,
variable resistors, etc.
Serial communication to Arduino can be established via
UART which has 2 pins RX and TX for receiving and sending
data for TTL serial communication. Serial communication can
also be done via the USB programming port this is useful for
monitoring the serial output directly on the serial monitor of
your computer and for debugging purposes [12].
E. Internet of Things (IoT)
Internet of Things refers to all the physical devices being
interconnected through a common network and where data is
transferred between them over a communication protocol. It
creates a machine to machine interaction such that it
eliminates the requirement of human to human and human to
machine interaction. It makes the devices fully automatic and
operates in an efficient manner [13]. It has many applications
in the areas like smart buildings [14], smart health care, smart
transportation, smart agriculture and so on. Now-a-days, it has
become quite popular in smart buildings because of many
advantages being offered [15]. In smart buildings, all the
devices are interconnected through a network and are
monitored and controlled using sensors and controllers.
In the prototype discussed in this paper, a temperature
sensor (LM35) and light sensor (LDR) are used for real time
monitoring of temperature and illumination levels of the
building. This real time monitoring is done using an IoT
platform “Thingspeak” to analyze and monitor the real live
data stream which is stored in the cloud [16]. Fig.8 and Fig.9
show the real time data stream stored in the cloud.
III. MODES OF OPERATION
In order to achieve the NZEB concept, three modes of
operation are performed independently which are as discussed
below.
A. Economy Mode
In this mode the electrical loads are controlled in such a
way that the electricity bill is almost reduced to zero. The
power generation from the solar panel is not constant
throughout the day as it depends on the solar irradiance.
Therefore, the power generation (Pgn) is varied in steps by
assuming the minimum and the maximum power generation of
50W and 250W. The load demand (Pd) is varied from 40W to
a maximum of 200W. If Pgn > Pd, the excess power is fed to
electric grid in order to compensate the power taken from the
grid during the period when Pgn < Pd. This will make the net
power imported and exported to the grid close to zero, thereby
the consumer need not pay the electricity bill and he can also
earn money by exporting the additional power after meeting
load demand. In this mode, the power generation is varied in
steps and is compared with the load power. The main aim of
this mode is to make the electricity bill zero. The disadvantage
of this mode is that the consumer cannot control the loads
once this mode is operated by Arduino controller.
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Algorithm for the implementation of Economy Mode:-
Step1: Consider that the PV power generation (Pgn) is varying
in steps from 50W to 250W as shown in Fig.2.
Step2: Four electrical loads - 60W (non-priority load1
(NPL1)), 60W (non-priority load2 (NPL2)), 40W (priority
load1 (PL1)) and 40W (priority load2 (PL2)) respectively are
considered.
Step3: The load power (Pd) is measured using a current and
voltage sensor and the signal is fed to the Arduino UNO as
analog input.
Step4: Net power generation (Pnet) is computed by subtracting
the power generation (Pgn) and the load power (Pd) in each
case i.e., Pnet = Pgn-Pd. Each case is run for a minute.
If Pgn > 200, then switch ON the four electrical loads.
If 160 <= Pgn < 200, then switch OFF Non-priority load1.
If Pgn < 160, then switch OFF Non-priority load1 and load2.
Analysis of each case:
Case1 and Case5: Taking Pgn = 50W, since Pgn < 160W, the
Non-priority load 1 and 2 are turned OFF.
Case 2 and Case4: Taking Pgn = 160W, since Pgn = 160 W, the
Non-priority load 1 is turned OFF.
Case 3: Taking Pgn = 250W, since Pgn > 200W, all electrical
loads are turned ON.
Step5: Parallelly, the room temperature and the illumination
levels are sensed and sent to the cloud storage for monitoring
and controlling of electrical loads.
Step6: Once in every five minutes, the net power (i.e., Pnet) is
computed and if it is found to be greater than or equal to zero,
it indicates that the power generation is greater than the power
demand.
Thus the NZEB concept is achieved by this economy mode.
Fig.7 shows that the value of net power after executing all the
five cases is +30 W, which indicates that 30W power is
exported to the electric grid over a given period of time.
In this mode the electrical loads are controlled by
comparing the room temperature and the illumination level
with the pre threshold values set by consumer. The room
temperature and the illumination level is sensed by LDR
sensor and the LM35 sensor and this sensed value is fed to the
Arduino controller for controlling the loads like Air
conditioner and the lighting loads. The disadvantage of this
mode is that the consumer cannot control the lighting and the
Air conditioning loads once this mode is operated by the
Arduino controller.
Algorithm for the implementation of Sensor Mode:-
Step1: Consider that the PV power generation (Pgn) is varying
in steps from 50W to 250W as shown in Fig.2.
Step2: Four electrical loads - 60W (non-priority load1), 60W
(non-priority load2), 40W (priority load1) and 40W (priority
load2) respectively are considered.
2017 IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP)
Step3: Measured values of temperature and illumination level obtained after executing all the cases over the given period of
of the room using the LM35 and LDR sensors are fed to the time is +30W, which represents that a net amount of power
Arduino UNO as analog inputs. exported to an electric grid.
• If LDR value > 512 counts, then switch OFF Non-priority
load1.
• If LM35 value < 35 degrees, then switch OFF Non-
priority load2.
Step4: The electrical loads are controlled by checking the
above conditions.
B. App Mode
In this mode, the electrical loads are controlled by operating
a Mobile Application (App). It has four loads with ON/OFF
control through Bluetooth connectivity. The controllable loads
are configured in this mobile App so that they can be
Fig. 4. Experimental result for Case 1 and Case 5
controlled at any time. The consumer has full control over the
ON and OFF of any load, but the disadvantage is that we
cannot achieve the economy and the sensor mode of
operations. The mobile is connected to the Arduino Uno by a
Bluetooth HC-05 module. This mobile App is developed using
an MIT App Inventor [17].
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The experimental setup is as shown in Fig.3. It contains an
Arduino UNO, ESP8266 Wi-Fi module, LDR sensor, LM35
sensor, ACS712 current sensor [18], Operating system with
Arduino IDE software, Relay, Bluetooth HC-05 module, 9V
Battery and the electrical loads of total 200W (60W, 60W, Fig. 5. Experimental result for Case 2 and Case 4
40W, 40W lamps).

Fig. 6. Experimental result for case3

Fig. 3. Experimental Setup Cases Pgn Loads switched Pd (W) Pnet = Pgn –
(W) ON Pd (W)
According to the logic discussed in economy mode the 1 50 PL1, PL2 80 -30
program is written in Arduino UNO. By using the sensors, the 2 160 NPL2, PL1, PL2 140 +20
load power is measured and compared with the available
power generation (by solar), which then produces
corresponding signals to control the electrical loads through 3 250 NPL1, NPL2, 200 +50
PL1, PL2
relay. Fig.4 shows the result when the power generation is
50W, accordingly the Non-priority loads 1 and 2 i.e., the two 4 160 NPL2, PL1, PL2 140 +20
60W lamps are turned OFF. In this case, the load is 80W by
keeping ON the priority load1 and priority load2 (i.e the two 5 50 PL1, PL2 80 -30
40W lamps) and the net power is computed and is shown in
Fig. 7. Net power on each case over a given period of time
Fig.7. Fig.5 shows the result when the power generation is
160W, then the Non-priority load 1 i.e., 60W lamp is turned
By using Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensor the room
OFF.
illumination level is measured and fed to any one of the ADC
Fig.6 shows the result when the power generation is of 250
pin of Arduino UNO for controlling the lighting loads (which
watts, then all the electrical loads are turned ON. Net power

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2017 IEEE Region 10 Symposium (TENSYMP)
is discussed in sensor mode). Arduino ADC is a 10 bit address
bus which counts a maximum of 1024. Fig. 8 shows the result
of illumination level of the room stored in the Internet Cloud
provided by “Thingspeak” IoT platform.
Fig. 8. LDR sensor value stored in cloud
Similarly, by using the temperature sensor (LM35), the
room temperature is measured and fed to Arduino UNO for
controlling the loads and it can be monitored by uploading this
information into the cloud provided by “Thingspeak” IoT
platform as shown in Fig.9.
Fig. 9. LM35 sensor value stored in cloud
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, implementation of home automation with
IoT using an intelligent microcontroller configured in
Arduino, using sensors like LDR (Light sensor) and LM35
(Temperature sensor) with mobile App; for achieving
NZEB concept in three independent modes of operation is
carried out. The experimental results in economy mode
show that the average net power obtained is Pnet = +30W,
which imply that the electric power exported to an electric
grid over a period of time is 30W. Therefore, the consumer
can sell the net amount power of 30W to an electric grid. In
sensor mode, the LDR and LM35 sensors will sense the
room illumination and the room temperature levels which
will be fed to the Arduino UNO to control the electrical
loads according to the logic written in Arduino sketch. For
monitoring the room temperature and the illumination level,
these sensor values are sent to the cloud storage provided by
“Thingspeak” IoT platform through a wireless
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communication using a ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. The
experimental results show that, the lights and the air
conditioning system are controlled by a controller and
sensors. The electrical loads are also controlled by operating
the mobile App in App mode.
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