There are international activities and on-going initiatives, particularly at the European level, to define what Positive Energy Districts should be, as the driving concept for the urban transition to a sustainable future. The first objective of the paper is to contribute to the on-going and lively debate about the definition of the notion of Sustainable Plus Energy Neighbourhood (SPEN), which highlights the multiple dimensions when talking about sustainability in districts moving beyond the traditional and strict building energy assessment. Based on a holistic methodology which ensures the consideration of the multidimensional nature and goals of SPEN, the paper outlines an evaluation framework. The evaluation framework defines the key performance indicators distributed in five categories that consider energy and power performance, GHG emissions, indoor environmental quality, smartness, flexibility, life cycle costs and social sustainability. This framework is designed to be implemented during integrated design processes aiming to select design options for a neighbourhood as well within during the operational phase for monitoring its performance. Further work will include the implementation and validation of the framework in four real-life positive energy neighbourhoods in different climate zones of Europe as part of syn.ikia H2020 project.
Purpose-There is profound demand for higher skills and expertise in retrofitting the existing building stock of Europe. The delivery of low-or nearly zero-energy retrofits is highly dependent on technical expertise, adoption of new materials, methods of construction and innovative technologies. Future Irish national building regulations will adopt the EPBD vision of retrofitting existing buildings to higher energy efficiency standards. The role of key stakeholders in the industry becomes highly responsible for achieving the energy performance targets. Specifically, the paper assesses the attitudes, approaches and experiences of Irish construction professionals regarding energy efficient buildings, particularly nZEBs. Design/methodology/approach-Data were collected through a series of assessments under qualitative research including survey, workshop and detailed interviews with professionals in the retrofit industry. The structure of this approach was informed by preliminary data and information available on the Irish construction sector. Findings-There is a substantial amount of ambiguity and reluctance among the professionals in reaching the Irish nearly zero-energy building (nZEB) targets. The growing retrofit industry demonstrates low-quality auditing and pre/post-retrofit analysis. Basic services and depth of retrofits are compromised by project budgets and marginal profits. Unaligned value supply chain, poor interaction among nZEB professionals and fragmented services are deterrents to industry standardisation. Social implications-This study has implications for understanding the social barriers existing in retrofit projects. Support from clients/ owners has a diverse impact on energy performance and retrofit decisions. Community-based initiatives are key to unlock the promotion of nZEBs. Practical implications-This study will enable construction industry stakeholders to make provisions for overcoming the barriers, gaps and challenges identified in the practices of the retrofit projects. It will also inform the formulation of policies that drive retrofit uptake. Originality/value-This paper provides an overview of current activities of retrofit professionals and analyses the barriers, gaps and challenges in the industry.
Deep-retrofit planning for existing buildings demands high accuracy in energy modelling prediction that minimises the gap between actual and simulated scenarios. A large set of interacting variables and uncertainties in energy performance modelling causes perturbations that can be minimised via model calibration. In this work, a novel multi-stage automated calibration methodology was developed using a case study of a partially-retrofitted university building (>35 yrs. old) in Ireland. The methodology enables the analysis of models for Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) variables along with energy demand. Due to the higher number of uncertainties in the model, a sensitivity analysis was conducted on the model that is both calibrated and validated as per ASHRAE Guide 14 indices of Cv(RMSE) and NMBE. The calibration process was automated using the optimisation algorithm NSGA-II with two sets of reference data i.e. monthly utility and hourly indoor air temperature. Results demonstrate that using only utility data for calibration did not result in accurate predictions of the thermal environment; thus, a second stage was used to improve the model prediction giving a Cv(RMSE) hourly =17.0 to 25.5% and NMBE hourly =3.6 to 10.0% for indoor air temperature across multiple zones. This paper demonstrates an effective staged approach for creating calibrated models of old buildings under high uncertainty that can be used to influence large-scale decision making for retrofits focused on improving indoor environment quality and energy performance.
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