The accuracy of energy simulation codes is considerably increasing and it follows that the inputs need to be properly defined and technically characterized. Despite the vast research on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, little is known about the extent to which a single thermophysical property affects the simulation outcomes. This information can guide the manufacturers of building materials towards improved quality controls and the energy modelers to deeply investigate the input data. This study focuses on the effect of uncertain thermophysical properties on the numerical solutions of the heat equation. A sensitivity analysis applied to several walls in different climates is carried out by using a Monte Carlo technique. Furthermore, the uncertainty propagation is investigated in the finite difference method (FD) and in the conduction transfer functions approach (CTF). For some configurations this study points out that the aleatory uncertainty of the material properties and the climatic boundary conditions have a synergistic effect on the precision of the model predictions. For the other cases, however, it becomes evident that the result precision depends only on both the variability of the thermophysical data and the model accuracy but not on the climate
The refurbishment of existing buildings allows remarkable improvements in energy performance, even by mature and off-the-shelf technologies. However, the pursuit of nearly zero energy buildings in renovation can lead to non-optimal solutions in terms of comfort. Besides, the initial cost can limit the owner in refurbishing buildings or drive the choice toward energy-efficiency measures with minimum initial cost at the expense of energy and non-energy performances. In this regard, financial incentives can be a key driver to stimulate renovation, mobilizing private investments and overcoming the high upfront costs and relatively long pay-back time of the retrofit. In the literature, the real effectiveness of incentives to improve both the comfort and the energy performance of the cost-optimal solutions has not been assessed in depth. This work investigates to which extent the incentives on different typologies of energy-efficiencymeasures can improve the performance of the optimal retrofits solutions. The analysis has been carried out on a set of different residential building modules, representative of different building typologies and Italian construction periods, located in two different climatic contexts representative of Italy, mixed-humid (Milano) and warm-marine (Messina) (ASHRAE 2007), optimizing the energy, costs, and indoor thermal comfort aspects
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.