scholarly journals Integration of Prioritisation Criteria in the Design of Energy Efficient Retrofitting Projects at District Scale: A Case Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 3861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Á. García-Fuentes ◽  
Sonia Álvarez ◽  
Víctor Serna ◽  
Maxime Pousse ◽  
Alberto Meiss
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Selection Of

The evident need for improving the existing building stock still suffers from important barriers, such as the fragmentation of the value chain, the lack of information regarding some solutions, and the lack of confidence with respect to energy savings, which prevent unlocking investments, and the difficult communication among stakeholders. Therefore, new processes based on exploiting the potential of existing and new tools are required. In this framework, the OptEEmAL project has developed a tool that integrates stakeholders, data and tools in order to ease the process of designing energy efficient retrofitting projects at building and district scale. This tool works around an optimisation framework in order to evaluate, compare and optimise candidate retrofitting scenarios against a set of indicators showing the performance of the district. This evaluation and optimisation method is based on aggregating indicators through transforming the priorities of stakeholders into a mathematical weighting scheme, which makes it possible to provide scenarios within their expectations. Therefore, the generation of these scenarios is driven by their design parameters, being thus flexible and adapted to their needs. This paper shows the implementation of this tool and specifically 3 different prioritisation schemes, analysing how they impact into the decision making process and selection of the retrofitting strategy.

scholarly journals Novel Methodology toward Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) Renovation: Cost-Effective Balance Approach as a Pre-Step to Cost-Optimal Life Cycle Cost Assessment

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 4141
Author(s):  
Yovko Ivanov Antonov ◽  
Per Kvols Heiselberg ◽  
Michal Zbigniew Pomianowski
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Cost ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Zero Energy ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Zero Energy Building ◽  
Selection Of

Reaching environmental targets set by the European Union (EU) requires a constant renovation of the existing building stock to nearly Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) in a cost-optimal manner. Studies show that the renovation rate of the existing building stock is more than two times less than what is necessary to reach the targets. Furthermore, the majority of performed renovations across the EU reach just a small amount of energy savings, whereas NZEB renovations are rarely achieved. This paper proposes a methodology for the evaluation of renovation measures, aiming to provide decision support related to the selection of what to renovate and to what extent. The proposed method is rooted in the well-established cost-optimal methodology, yet it suggests a pre-step to package evaluation. This is done by means of a simplified cost-effective parameter (CEP), linking cost, lifetime, and energy savings. The methodology is demonstrated using a case study building in Denmark. The results show that the CEP provides good grounds for the compilation of single actions to packages. Further developments could focus on the sensitivity of the model inputs and integration of additional evaluation parameters to cost, such as environmental, architectural, comfort, risk, etc.

scholarly journals Energy Efficient Improvements of Existing Buildings through Building Envelope Upgrade Case Study of High Rise Block of Flats on 76, Boulevard Partizanski Odredi in Karpos IV, Skopje

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-180
Author(s):  
Katerina Petrushevska
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Building Envelope ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Class B

AIM: This research examines the important issue of energy efficient improvements to the existing building stock through building envelope upgrade. To facilitate this, the energy performance characteristics of the existing building stock were identified with a view to establishing an existing building stock type, where building envelope upgrades can contribute to a higher level of energy efficiency improvements. The literature review along with the selected building precedents was used to establish the best current practice for building envelope upgrades.MATERIAL AND METHODS: Established building precedents and identified best practice for building envelope upgrade, a high rise block of flats was identified and used as a case study, with the current and predicted, following building envelope upgrade, energy performance of the building calculated. This has allowed us to identify the possible energy efficiency improvements for this type of building following the building envelope upgrade. RESULTS: In the projected case, the building with energy class - "D" become class "B". In addition, increased quality of the living room in the attic was enabled. It was possible to obtain a decrease of the heating energy from 130.76 kWh/m²a to 37.73 kWh/m²a or to jump in the class "B" of energetic passport.CONCLUSION: This research contributes to the local implementation of the global agenda for sustainable development, design and construction, and it demonstrates the possible way and level of energy efficiency improvements to the least efficient building stock through existing building envelope upgrade.

scholarly journals An Analytical Approach for the Selection of Technologies to be Integrated in a Plug&play Façade Unit: The RenoZEB Case Study

Proceedings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Alessandro Pracucci ◽  
Sara Magnani ◽  
Laura Vandi ◽  
Oscar Casadei ◽  
Amaia Uriarte ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Building Envelope ◽  
Design System ◽  
Decision Matrix ◽  
Design Guideline ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Building Conditions ◽  
Zero Energy Building ◽  
System A ◽  
Selection Of

The nearly Zero Energy building (nZEB) renovation market is currently the key feature in the construction sector. RenoZEB aims to develop a systematic approach for retrofitting by assembling different technologies in a plug and play building envelope. This paper presents the methodology used to transform the RenoZEB concept in the design system. A multi-criteria decision matrix is used for the selection of the best façade technologies within the market while the analysis of the existing building conditions allows to develop a replicable approach for designing deep retrofitting intervention through a plug&play façade. The methodology appears to be a valuable support for the selection of technologies and allows to define a design guideline for the envelope.

scholarly journals RINNO: Towards an Open Renovation Platform for Integrated Design and Delivery of Deep Renovation Projects

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6018
Author(s):  
Theo Lynn ◽  
Pierangelo Rosati ◽  
Antonia Egli ◽  
Stelios Krinidis ◽  
Komninos Angelakoglou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Horizon 2020 ◽  
Regulatory Standards ◽  
Automation Systems ◽  
Wide Range

The building stock accounts for a significant portion of worldwide energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. While the majority of the existing building stock has poor energy performance, deep renovation efforts are stymied by a wide range of human, technological, organisational and external environment factors across the value chain. A key challenge is integrating appropriate human resources, materials, fabrication, information and automation systems and knowledge management in a proper manner to achieve the required outcomes and meet the relevant regulatory standards, while satisfying a wide range of stakeholders with differing, often conflicting, motivations. RINNO is a Horizon 2020 project that aims to deliver a set of processes that, when working together, provide a system, repository, marketplace and enabling workflow process for managing deep renovation projects from inception to implementation. This paper presents a roadmap for an open renovation platform for managing and delivering deep renovation projects for residential buildings based on seven design principles. We illustrate a preliminary stepwise framework for applying the platform across the full-lifecycle of a deep renovation project. Based on this work, RINNO will develop a new open renovation software platform that will be implemented and evaluated at four pilot sites with varying construction, regulatory, market and climate contexts.

scholarly journals Life-Cycle Assessment of a Rural Terraced House: A Struggle with Sustainability of Building Renovations

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2472
Author(s):  
Karel Struhala ◽  
Milan Ostrý
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Energy Sources ◽  
Construction Sector ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
New Construction ◽  
Consumption Energy

Contemporary research stresses the need to reduce mankind’s environmental impacts and achieve sustainability. One of the keys to this is the construction sector. New buildings have to comply with strict limits regarding resource consumption (energy, water use, etc.). However, they make up only a fraction of the existing building stock. Renovations of existing buildings are therefore essential for the reduction of the environmental impacts in the construction sector. This paper illustrates the situation using a case study of a rural terraced house in a village near Brno, Czech Republic. It compares the life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the original house and its proposed renovation as well as demolition followed by new construction. The LCA covers both the initial embodied environmental impacts (EEIs) and the 60-year operation of the house with several variants of energy sources. The results show that the proposed renovation would reduce overall environmental impacts (OEIs) of the house by up to 90% and the demolition and new construction by up to 93% depending on the selected energy sources. As such, the results confirm the importance of renovations and the installation of environmentally-friendly energy sources for achieving sustainability in the construction sector. They also show the desirability of the replacement of inefficient old buildings by new construction in specific cases.

Cutting the Deployment Costs of Physics-Based MPC in Buildings by Simulation-Based Imitation Learning

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Drgona ◽  
Lieve Helsen ◽  
Draguna L. Vrabie
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Simulation Based ◽  
The Neural Networks ◽  
Promising Solution ◽  
Simple Evaluation ◽  
Energy Efficient Building

Abstract It has been shown that model predictive control (MPC) is a promising solution for energy-efficient building operations. However, the deployment of MPC in a large portion of the building stock has not been possible partially because of high installation costs. Every building is unique and requires a tailored MPC solution. The best performing solutions are often based on physics-based modeling, which is, however, computationally expensive and requires dedicated software. A promising direction that tackles this problem is to train a neural network-based optimal control policy to imitate the behavior of physics-based MPC from the simulation data generated offline. The neural networks give control actions that closely approximate those produced by physics-based MPC, but with a fraction of the computational and memory requirements and without the need for licensed software. The main advantage of the proposed approach stems from simple evaluation at execution time, leading to low computational foot-prints and easy deployment on embedded HW platforms. In the case study, we present the energy savings potential of physics-based MPC applied to an office building in Belgium. We demonstrate how neural network approximators can be used to cut the implementation and maintenance costs of MPC deployment without compromising performance. We also critically assess the presented approach by pointing out the remaining challenges and open research questions.

Energy Efficiency in French Social Housing Renovations via Design-Build-Maintain

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-56
Author(s):  
Tadeo Baldiri Salcedo Rahola ◽  
Ad Straub ◽  
Angela Ruiz Lázaro ◽  
Yves Galiègue
Keyword(s):  
Social Housing ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Substantial Improvement ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Delivery Methods ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Design Build ◽  
Bonuses And Penalties ◽  
Design Bid Build

The renovation of existing building stock is seen as one the most practical ways to achieve the high energy savings targets for the built environment defined by European authorities. In France, the Grenelle environmental legislation addresses the need to renovate the building stock and specifically stresses the key role of social housing organisations. In recent years, French procurement rules have been modified in order to allow social housing organisations to make use of integrated contracts such as Design-Build-Maintain. These contracts have a greater potential to deliver energy savings in renovation projects than do traditional project delivery methods, like Design-bid-Build. This is because they facilitate collaboration between the various actors and boost their commitment to the achievement of project goals. In order to evaluate the estimated potential of such contracts to achieve energy savings, two renovation projects (carried out by two French social housing organisations) were analysed from their inception until the end of construction work. The analysis is based on written tender documents, technical evaluation reports, observations of the negotiation phase (in one of the cases) and interviews with the main actors involved. Findings show that Design-Build-Maintain contracts do indeed offer substantial energy savings. Both projects achieved higher energy targets than those initially required. Furthermore, the energy results are guaranteed by the contractor, through a system of bonuses and penalties. Other results demonstrate that, compared to previous Design-bid-Build renovation projects, these projects were completed in less time (from project inception to completion of the work) and at virtually the same cost. There has also been a substantial improvement in cooperation between the actors involved.

scholarly journals Modeling of an Aerogel-Based “Thermal Break” for Super-Insulated Window Frames

Buildings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Cannavale ◽  
Francesco Martellotta ◽  
Umberto Berardi ◽  
Chiara Rubino ◽  
Stefania Liuzzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Building Stock ◽  
Insulating Materials ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Heating And Cooling ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Optimal Exploitation ◽  
Indoor Comfort ◽  
Window Frames

Research activities in the field of innovative fixtures are continuously aiming at increasing their thermal and optical performances to offer optimal exploitation of daylight and solar gains, providing effective climate screen, according to increasing standards for indoor comfort and energy saving. Within this work, we designed an innovative aerogel-based “thermal break” for window frames, so as to consistently reduce the frame conductance. Then, we compared the performance of this new frame both with currently used and obsolete frames, present in most of the existing building stock. Energy savings for heating and cooling were assessed for different locations and confirmed the potential role played by super-insulating materials in fixtures for extremely rigid climates.

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