Handling data uncertainties when using Swedish energy performance certificate data to describe energy usage in the building stock

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe EU directive to create Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) for all buildings was implemented in Sweden as a tool to advise building owners on possible improvements and to give energy efficiency visible market value. The Swedish EPCs include measured energy usage. Currently 82% of the buildings have EPCs; this database makes it possible to create overview and to validate models of the building stock in an unprecedented high detail.However, the process of issuing Swedish EPCs has received criticism from real estate agents, real estate owners, Energy Experts, and Boverket, the national agency responsible for EPC data collection. In order to use the EPC data for describing the building stock it is necessary to assess and remediate the data quality. This has been done by merging the EPC data with databases of the Housing and Urban Development office and one of the larger real estate companies in Sweden, Riksbyggen. The Swedish EPC specific area measurement, Atemp, is found to vary according to methods of derivation. The method of estimating Atemp is improved using a stepwise regression model (R 2 = 0.979). This method can be applied to subsets of EPCs depending on the intended way of describing the building stock.

Harvesting big data from residential building energy performance certificates: retrofitting and climate change mitigation insights at a regional scale

“…As stated by Mangold et al (2015), EPC data quality should be remediated before its use. Therefore, predata analysis and data cleansing were performed prior to the analysis.…”

“…In the context of these kind of analyses, EPCs have been used for: (1) energy planning at different scales (3) mapping the energy performance of buildings (Droutsa et al 2016, Gangolells et al 2016, Hjortling et al 2017; (4) evaluating regional appropriateness of the EPC methodology, accuracy of measurement or calculating uncertainties pertaining to the use of EPC to describe energy usage in the building stock (respectively Tronchin and Fabbri 2012, Mangold et al 2015, Abela et al 2016; (5) testing the impact of EPCs on the retrofit of buildings (Charalambides et al 2019).…”

Impact of Adding Comfort Cooling Systems on the Energy Consumption and EPC Rating of an Existing UK Hotel

“…The approaches towards data collection, as well as generating EPCs and deciding on the parameters to include, differ from one country to another [23][24][25]. As an example, in Swedish EPC procedure, measured energy use and data on the energy bills are included [3,26,27]. In the UK, the process of generating EPCs-which became mandatory in 2008-is carried out under the guidelines of the National Calculation Methodology (NCM).…”

Building Ownership, Renovation Investments, and Energy Performance—A Study of Multi-Family Dwellings in Gothenburg

“…Some datasets used for the analyses in this article were previously described in an article on the data quality of Swedish EPC data [30] and an article describing the renovation and energy retrofitting need in Gothenburg [31]. In these articles analyses of aspects related to the work behind this article such as data uncertainties can be found.…”

“…Most EPCs for multi-family dwellings in Gothenburg were issued in 2008 and 2009 [30]. Since only one measurement of energy use is available from the EPC the statistical analysis for the relationship between building energy performance and investment in renovation the buildings were divided using renovation year of 2009 as a watershed.…”