Energy Retrofitting Effects on the Energy Flexibility of Dwellings

Abstract

Electrification of the built environment is foreseen as a main driver for energy transition for more effective, electric renewable capacity firming. Direct and on-time use of electricity is the best way to integrate them, but the current energy demand of residential building stock is often mainly fuel-based. Switching from fuel to electric-driven heating systems could play a key role. Yet, it implies modifications in the building stock due to the change in the temperature of the supplied heat by new heat pumps compared to existing boilers and in power demand to the electricity meter. Conventional energy retrofitting scenarios are usually evaluated in terms of cost-effective energy saving, while the effects on the electrification and flexibility are neglected. In this paper, the improvement of the building envelope and the installations of electric-driven space heating and domestic hot water production systems is analyzed for 419 dwellings. The dwellings database was built by means of a survey among the students attending the Faculty of Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome. A set of key performance indicators were selected for energy and environmental performance. The changes in the energy flexibility led to the viable participation of all the dwellings to a demand response programme.

How Climate Change Affects the Building Energy Consumptions Due to Cooling, Heating, and Electricity Demands of Italian Residential Sector

“…The same building sample was used in other recent works of the authors so as to identify what are the flexible loads [39], to analyse the energy retrofitting effects on the potential of flexibility on the grid [40], and to evaluate the impact of building automation control systems on energy performance [41]; Section 3.1 provides a more extensive description of the sample characteristics.…”

“…The energy characterization reported in [39] shows that energy consumption for the inner space heating is on average equal to 43.5% of the total; energy consumption for cooling, in dwellings where the service is present, is on average 3.6%; the other services have a total incidence of 52.9% characterised by relative shares equal to 14.1% for DHW, 12.4% for cooking purpose, 5.6% for washing machines, and 4.1% for computer/Internet refrigeration 3.8%; thereafter the cleaning and ironing use represents only 3.5% while the care person lighting, audio/video, and the other equipment are equal to 2.9%, 2.7%, 1.8%, and 1.9%, respectively. For more information on the building sample characteristics and its energy characterization see [39][40][41].…”

Energy Refurbishment of a School Building in Ceprano, Italy

“…According to energy labelling, the refurbished building belongs to category A3 since its EPgl,nren consumption goes down to 44.4 kWh/m 2 y. At the same time, the renewable fraction rises dramatically of ten times to 51.5% accounting for the heat pump air-source and the electricity produced by the PV system [47]. Those quantities are reported in Table 3.…”

Energy Savings in an University Educational Building – The Case Of Chemistry Building Of Sapienza

“…-50%, and with a renewable fraction of 20.9% deriving from the PV array and the National Grid contribution, as shown in Table 3. It allows reaching further energy flexibility level [48].…”