Building regulations are an important policy instrument available to governments wishing to improve building energy efficiency, which should be a priority to policy-makers wishing to target cost-effective avenues in support of carbonabatement targets. Meanwhile, building system commissioning has been recognized as a cost-effective measure to cut energy consumption, but in practice commissioning quality can deliver less-than-satisfactory outcomes. Regulation needs to better support commissioning outcomes. A five-grade commissioning scale is developed to assess the quality of commissioning and propose a common language to assist with regulation setting. Using this scale, building regulation and polices related to new and refurbished building commissioning were analysed in comparative case studies between jurisdictions England and California. This study finds that Californian regulations mandate a higher quality of commissioning and regulations that are more enforceable. The crucial elements to support bettercommissioned buildings were identified as: outputs-focused regulation (not input based); regulation and process clarity; commissioning agents and building official training; as well as acknowledging the financial burden of upholding more complex building regulations. For the full benefit of commissioning to be realized, policy and regulations for existing buildings will be required.
The gap between as-designed and as-operating energy consumption of new buildings has been widely recognized. Commissioning for optimal energy performance should be a key process to remedy this but in practice, due to shortages of time and budget, commissioning is often limited to ensuring ‘practical completion’ and minimum year-round energy consumption may not be achieved. Commissioning implementation suffers, historically, from poor availability of real time data. Portable wireless sensor networks offer substantial opportunities to support energy-efficient seasonal commissioning by giving temporary access to additional, continuously and simultaneously monitored data points. This paper describes a strategy to implement ‘smart commissioning’ through portable wireless sensor networks for air conditioning systems. Key requirements for delivering seasonal commissioning strategies of multi-modal systems are discussed.
Practical application: The importance of post-occupancy commissioning in delivering good energy and environmental performance of new buildings is now widely recognised through practices such as soft landings. However, troubleshooting can be difficult when the building is occupied and budget to do this limited. The building management system may identify that there is a problem but is very unlikely to be collecting the necessary forensic data to solve it. Portable wireless sensor networks specifically designed for analysing building services can overcome this problem in a convenient and economical way and can help development of new industry tools to close the performance gaps and demonstrate in-use building performance.
For promoting the diffusion of GSHP and making the technology more accessible to the general public, in the H2020 research project “CHeap and Efficient APplication of reliable Ground Source Heat exchangers and PumpS” (acronym Cheap-GSHPs) a tool for sizing these systems has been developed, as well as a Decision Support System (DSS) able to assist the user in the preliminary design of the most suitable configuration.
For all these tools a common platform has been carried out considering climatic conditions, energy demand of buildings, ground thermal properties, heat pump solutions repository, as well as renewable energy database to use in synergy with the GSHPs. Since the aims of the tools are different, there are different approaches.
The design tool is mainly addressed to designers. The calculation may be done in two ways: with a simplified method based on the ASHRAE approach and with a detailed calculation based on the numerical tool CaRM (Capacity-Resistance method).
The DSS final aim is to support decision-making, by providing the stakeholders at all the level with a series of scenario. The Cheap-GSHPs project has developed a DSS tool aimed at accelerating the decision-making process of designers and building owners as well as increasing market share of the Cheap-GSHPs technologies. Hence the DSS generates different possible solutions based on a defined general problem, identifying the optimal solution.
Both tools are presented in the paper, showing the potentialities provided by both software.
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