Impact of demand response on occupants’ thermal comfort in a leisure center

Many assets that are normally installed during an energy-efficient building retrofit can also be used to provide flexible services to the electricity grid. By turning off or turning down some mechanical systems during peak times, it is possible for a building to reduce its load on the electricity network. A field demand response event was simulated at a leisure center in Ireland to evaluate the suitability of the site to participate in the Irish demand response market, to assess how much flexibility it can provide, how much the indoor conditions changed during the test, and to examine whether these remained within satisfactory limits. A survey was conducted to determine whether the occupants perceived any changes to their thermal comfort. The simulation was achieved by identifying non-critical mechanical equipment and turning them off for 2 h. A processing station for demand response and energy monitoring delivered the demand response signal to the site’s building management system. The results show that this site had a flexibility potential of 45 kW, which is considered too low to participate in the demand response market, as Irish aggregators favor sites that can offer over 250-kW flexibility. However, the indoor thermal conditions remained within reasonable ranges and the occupants did not notice the impact of the demand response event. This shows that theoretically, if smaller sites were allowed to sell their flexibility to the electricity market, such leisure centers could participate in demand response services without impacting occupants’ comfort.

The EN-TRACK Energy Efficiency Performance Tracking Platform for Benchmarking Savings and Investments in Buildings. Data Model Development

This paper is related to the H2020 project EN-TRACK, dedicated to developing a platform for gathering data on the performance of energy efficiency investments in buildings. The project aims to collect and harmonize data from different sources and provide services supporting investors and building owners in decision-making and de-risking building retrofit projects. The paper focuses on the methodology and the semantic technologies used in the development of the platform’s data model, which enables the interoperability of data, and supports the service functionalities for tracking building energy performance and benchmarking savings from energy efficiency investments.

Urban regeneration and building retrofit. A strategy towards instilling a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship

The United Arab Emirates’ economy is transitioning to a knowledge-based economy by promoting innovation and research development. Supporting the UAE’s Vision at becoming among the best and most innovative nation in the world by 2071, the Government has developed frameworks that recognize the importance of innovation to an economy’s growth and development. This paper presents the results of a design research where the domain of architecture and engineering blend with economics and social studies to the serve the UAE’s vision, proposing urban solutions to launch the country in its ‘next 50’ years, with an eye for the preservation and revitalization of the exiting and valuable resources. The research project proposes a different geography of innovation and introduces urban regeneration strategies to stimulate innovative policies for the built environment of the entire UAE territory. With the intent of forming an intangible connection between the seven Emirates, the proposed intervention can be situated in every state. The study especially looks into the three neighboring Emirates or Dubai, Sharjah, and Ajman, and finally select the latter to test the introduction of strategically designed spaces in degraded (and disconnected) locations to encourage the community to innovate while at the same time reusing/refurbishing the existing resources/buildings/facilities. The specific case study involves the design of an incubator facility in an obsolete villa community in Ajman, formerly hosting locals (therefore luxurious) that now have left for better locations and cannot manage to resell their properties due to the decadence of the neighbourhood. The incubator, a building articulated in the interstitial spaces in between the villas, would reactivate the district by attracting young and innovative entrepreneurs, who settle there for both working and living, exploiting the incubator complex as a parasite of the existing villas. If successful, the project will revive the district, provide it a new brand, and create a new financial stream to self-support its gradual regeneration.

Electricity demand flexibility potential of optimal building retrofit solutions

Swiss buildings, the majority of which will last beyond 2050, are responsible for a large share of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, building retrofit is considered as one of the most promising approaches to reduce those shares. However, reducing the energy load should not be an end in itself. The continuous integration of intermittent power sources in the electricity grid imposes new challenges to the supply-demand problem that might directly affect the retrofit process and vice-versa. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a model to analyze the demand flexibility potential of optimal retrofit solutions. Co-simulation and a rolling horizon approach are used to derive upper and lower electricity consumption profiles given some temperature comfort bands. Within those electricity bands, the feasible area provides insights on the extent by which the electricity consumption can be shifted within the comfort constraints. The method is applied to a building archetype. Results show that when the comfort constraints are relaxed the feasible area increases, e.g., up to five times for the case of enhancing the roof insulation, while building retrofit influences the electricity bands. Such a method could enhance the retrofit process and address both the emissions’ and the supply-demand balancing problem.

Sustainability Perspective to Support Decision Making in Structural Retrofitting of Buildings: A Case Study

The reuse of existing materials in buildings can give a contribution to sustainable practices such as a balance in embodied energy, water, and emission reduction. However, it is not always possible to maintain the existing structural materials because some different technical variables could hamper their usability, namely seismic reinforcement needs, fire safety protection, conservation state, and new legal requirements. The paper follows a case study approach for assessing the technical and environmental performances of structural options for old building retrofitting works. All structural options were analyzed through the results of several categories of environmental impact. Some parameters of a retrofitting management system were also used to frame in a comprehensive way the technical constraints pertaining to building retrofitting works. The structural option choice was taken by the owner with the contribution of the design team and the construction manager of the construction project as well as the results of interviews with other construction professionals, considering the variables related to technical suitability and environmental impact. The results of the study show that the steel structure is the solution that best addresses the technical constraints of the building retrofit works and minimizes environmental impact. The results of the study also suggest that the consideration of other variables other than the technical ones can contribute to the effective functioning of the renovation subsegment of the building market. Some suggestions for further studies to enhance the results of this work are put forward.

Integrated Deep Renovation of Existing Buildings with Prefabricated Shell Exoskeleton

The European goal to reach carbon neutrality in 2050 has further put the focus on the construction sector, which is responsible for great impacts on the environment, and new sustainable solutions to renovate the existing building stock are currently under development. In this paper, the AdESA (Adeguamento Energetico Sismico ed Architettonico, in Italian) system, a holistic retrofit technique for the integrated renovation of the existing buildings, is presented. The system was developed by a consortium of enterprises and universities and was applied to a pilot building. The system consists of a dry, modular and flexible shell exoskeleton technique that implements different layers depending on the building retrofit needs (cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels for the structural retrofit, thermal insulation panels for the energy efficiency amelioration, and claddings for the architectural restyling). In order to foster actual sustainability, the solution contextually targets eco-efficiency, safety and resilience. To this end, the system not only couples the structural and energy interventions to reduce the operating costs, but it is also conceived in compliance with life cycle thinking (LCT) principles to reduce impacts throughout the remaining building service life (from retrofit time to the end of its life). The system is designed to be easily mountable and demountable to allow for the reuse/recycling of its components at the end of life by adopting macro-prefabricated dry components and standardized connections, to reduce damage caused by earthquakes by reducing the allowed inter-story drift, and by amassing the possible damage into sacrificial replaceable elements. The paper describes the AdESA system from a multidisciplinary perspective and its effective application for the deep renovation of an existing gymnasium hall.