Public Research Seminar by Sustainable Energy and Environment Thrust - Frontier research on transition towards zero-energy buildings with distributed renewables, thermal/battery/hydrogen storages and advanced energy management strategies
Supporting the below United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:支持以下聯合國可持續發展目標：支持以下联合国可持续发展目标：
Energy-efficient design, cleaner power production and hybrid energy storages are essential for the transition towards zero-energy buildings and carbon-neutral district energy community with high energy flexibility and eco-economic viability. However, the transition roadmap is full of great challenges, requiring combined efforts from multidisciplinary research, including advanced building materials, sustainable energy and environment, electrochemical storages, artificial intelligence and so on. Effective strategies for zero-energy buildings can be resorted mainly from passive building design (e.g., highly insulated materials on building façade, solar-reflective coatings on glazing, super-insulating aerogel glazing and daytime sky radiative cooling) and distributed renewable energy supply (e.g., solar PV, wind turbine and earth-to-air heat exchanger). However, due to the intermittent renewable energy and stochastic energy demand, their spatiotemporal mismatch requires grid interaction for the dynamic power balance, but imposes great import/export pressure on the local micro-grid. The hybrid energy storages and advanced energy management strategies are thereafter important, for self-sufficiency and grid independence of building energy systems. In this seminar, roadmaps for transition towards zero-energy buildings are introduced, including a series of building energy-efficient technologies, distributed renewable energy technologies and hybrid energy storages (i.e., thermal, electrical and hydrogen storages). Multidisciplinary research has been conducted with application of machine learning in performance prediction of nonlinear systems (e.g., building energy prediction and battery cycling ageing), smart demand-side control, multivariant and multi-objective optimizations. Advanced energy conversion and management strategies are introduced on dynamic energy dispatch of renewable energy, demands, storages and micro-grids. Furthermore, ideas and plans with integrated cutting-edge technologies are proposed to promote the transformation towards zero-energy buildings and carbon-neutral district energy community.
Dr. Zhou obtained his Master’s degree in Heating, Ventilation and Air-conditioning Engineering from Hunan University in 2017. His PhD degree was obtained in 2021 from the Department of Building Services Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPolyU). He worked as research assistant for one year in HKPolyU from 2017 to 2018. Dr. Zhou conducted his PhD attachment program in 2019 in Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands. His research expertise is mainly in the fields of zero/low energy buildings, energy flexible buildings, renewable energy, thermal/electrical/hydrogen storages, energy management and control strategy, smart and optimal systems with machine-learning techniques.