Transitioning positive energy buildings towards positive energy Communities: Leveraging performance indicators for site planning assessments

Harnessing energy surpluses and technological advances from positive energy buildings (PEBs) within a community offers a logical transition pathway from PEBs to positive energy communities (PECs). This study proposes a set of reasonable performance indicators (KPIs) for streamlining site planning assessments based on existing PEBs, aiming to transition to PECs for achieving energy autonomy in off-grid states. The proposed KPIs include energy surplus ratio, PEB area coverage ratio, community energy difference, shared energy matching ratio, and PEB impact coefficient. A sample of 81 PEBs provided by a real database in North America was selected for testifying these KPIs, and relevant geographic analyses and simulations were performed. Four PV installation scenarios and three radius ranges were considered for building energy generation and energy consumption. The results show that the establishment of a PEC through a PEB is promising. In existing communities, the physical boundary of the transition from PEB to PEC can be determined to be between 150 and 250 m. The study also found that educational buildings should be closely integrated with residential buildings in the energy resilience planning process. KPIs offer crucial insights for initial PEC site selection, offering practical guidance for PEC development and informing strategic decisions in planning PECs through PEBs. This study’s findings serve as actionable guidance for stakeholders, such as urban planners, policymakers, developers, and researchers, facilitating the creation of sustainable and energy-positive communities.