Technical and architectural energy strategies for the smart living lab, a sustainable building with reliable environmental objectives

Currently, energy efficiency in buildings is a primary objective of energy policy at regional, national and international levels. On a local scale, this trend has been detected also in Switzerland, where almost 40% of energy consumption has been assumed to be used for heating, ventilation and lighting in buildings. The smart living lab project is born under this scenario, aiming to be a building icon and a sustainability example. Via reducing environmental impacts and its footprint on the local ecosystem, the project intends to reach certain authoritative objectives, like the ones given by the 2000 Watt-Society. The smart living lab is a research centre on future built environment in Fribourg, Switzerland. It accommodates interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research groups and provides infrastructures for experiment on developing innovative concepts and technologies related to inhabitation and work environment. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the main technical and architectural macroparameters and their contribution to energy consumption. The latter in the smart living building is calculated in the aspects of both quantity [kWh/m2] and quality [kg CO2/kWh]. Global sensitivity analysis (SA) was selected as the method to demonstrate the contribution of certain key design parameters to the building energy consumption and their correlations along with the changes of variables. Several energy simulations have been conducted with the variation of each design parameter independently. Finally, due to the elaborated cases, the SA was completed with the identification of the predominant factors on the main energy outputs e.g. primary energy.

Velux Lab: innovation between art and science

Arianna Brambilla

Veluxlab is the first Italian Nearly Zero Energy Building. It is placed in Bovisa Campus of Politecnico di Milano and it represents a study case of high energy efficiency building, integrating in the future scenario required by the European Directive 2010/31/UE. VELUXlab was born as a Mediterranean Model Home for VELUX, called Atika, designed by J.A. Cantalejo and R.A.Ronda from ACXT/IDOM studio. It personified the prototype of energy efficiency building for the Mediterranean Region and it is the result of an important architectural and performance retrofit. The renovation was led by Atelier2 with the supervision of Professor Imperadori and Professor Motta from Politecnico di Milano.The collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and VELUX Italia gave the opportunity of create a new lab, a sort of test building, where it is possible to develop the experimental research on going in the University. In this way VELUXlab became itself matter of research on the energy efficiency and sustainability in the building sector. The use of innovative solutions and materials for the envelope coupled with an advanced technological system, makes representing the first Italian nearly Zero Energy Building in a University Campus. Furthermore, thanks to its energetic performance and to the integration of renewable source, it is the first built Active House in Italy (www.activehouse.info). VELUXlab is, therefore, an example of smart and sustainable re-use of an existing structure as well as a model of energy efficient building and a prototype for the new generation home, bringing forward future experimentations and implementation in the sector. It is the profitable collaboration between Politecnico and construction companies that allows to innovate, test and research sustainability and efficiency. The west wing of the building and the conditioning system are equipped with a revolutionary wireless sensors network (WSN), designed by the DEI Department of Politecnico di Milano (Prof. Cugola, Ing. Sivieri), that allows a constantly monitoring of the real performance of the envelope - indoor comfort system. The real time results are broadcasted on the University intranet, elaborated by a remote server and then made available on-line. Thanks to this streaming it is possible to understand the real performance of VELUXlab in the first year of measurement. This data portray the ordinary operational situation, including the internal strains given by the users; it is easy to understand that the building itself is a prototype, conceived as an active and dynamic laboratory. In order to make easier the data interpretation and management, the Design Department (Prof. Bordegoni), is been studying an innovative and more intuitive way to visualize the sensors data, with the implementation of the graphic interface in an augmented reality platform. It is easy to understand that VELUXlab offers continuously incentives and opportunities for testing and experimenting innovative solutions and ideas, giving the chance to continue research and studies.

2013

Novel models towards predictive control of advanced building systems and occupant comfort in buildings

Nikolaos Zarkadis

People in developed countries spend today most of their time inside buildings as part of the modern way of life. As a result, the building sector accounts for almost 40% of the total energy consumption and a big part of the energy bill goes to maintain the visual and thermal comfort of their occupants. At the same time, awareness is being raised during the last decades about the greenhouse gas emissions and the possibly irreversible effects of global warming; both linked to excessive use of non-renewable primary energy sources which still power most of the world, including our buildings. Thus, moderating the energy consumed in them is a top priority. However, this does not imply a horizontal cut in energy consumption that would result in a drop of user comfort. Instead, we suggest that improving energy efficiency in buildings while maintaining or even improving the user comfort is the optimal solution. It is indeed the core of this thesis that there is a great energy saving potential in refining the control of building systems such as electric lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation, which more than often consume a lot of energy without delivering the analogous amount of visual and thermal comfort. In this direction, this thesis proposes the development of a novel predictive control algorithm for the control of electrochromic glazing using a low cost sky scanner using a simple web camera. The developed algorithm demonstrated an average prediction accuracy of 92% and integrates and controls the blinds and electric lighting to maximise visual comfort taking into account outdoor and indoor conditions, presence and user actions. Measurements and extensive simulations showed that the elaborated algorithm improves thermal and visual comfort when compared to standard glazing coupled with blinds and exhibits acceptable levels of energy consumption for space heating and electric lighting. In the same subject of improving building control, a novel approach for controlling building systems by using state-based stochastic data-driven models to identify "season" is defined and developed. We reason that the season variable is unique to every building and it depends on weather conditions, user behaviour and building construction. The developed models identified "season" with an accuracy that ranged from 69 to 91% and it was shown through simulations that a controller based on Hidden Markov Models can reduce energy demand for heating and improve the thermal comfort of occupants in different building construction types. Finally, the use of Hidden Markov Models was further explored in this thesis by suggesting a novel model for the estimation of occupants' visual comfort in buildings. The proposed model is based on horizontal workplane illuminance measurements using ceiling-mounted sensors as well on vertical illuminance monitoring at the observer's eyes plane (pupillary illuminance) by means of wearable portable sensors. We argue that the proposed model improves greatly over the various existing discomfort glare indices and metrics and it is also convincingly demonstrated that it can be seamlessly integrated and used in building automation systems based on fuzzy logic.

EPFL2015

Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the Quartier Nord: objective zero-power

Jérôme Henri Kämpf, Dasaraden Mauree, Jean-Louis Scartezzini, Yang Yao

Buildings account for almost 40% of energy consumption in European countries and hence are responsible for a significant part of greenhouse gas emissions. Recent regulations and standards (Minergie, Minergie P, etc.) are strongly encouraging more sustainable buildings by decreasing energy consumption and integrating more renewable energy sources. It is essential, in such a context, to evaluate the performance of buildings and to determine how relevant are the integration of renewable energies and how their implementation can be improved in order to give full autonomy to such a district (towards zero power districts). In order to achieve this, it is here proposed to use building energy simulation tools to simulate the heating and cooling energy demand. First Energy Plus is used to simulate the demand with a detailed geometrical model of the STCC. Although the results did not give good agreement when compared with a set of measured and recorded data, they corresponded to what has been expected from the Minergie standards. The geometrical model is then simplified and used as input for simulations with both CitySim and Energy Plus. The differences between both models are considered to be acceptable (15%). Finally, the evaluation of the potential for the integration of renewable energy and storage capacity is done with CitySim. This work is expected to provide a methodology which could be used in the evaluation of building energy use and help with the integration of renewable energy at a neighbourhood scale along with the dimensioning of the energy storage. Furthermore we gave a quantitative analysis of the differences between the two models. It is thus proposed in future work to couple both models using a co-simulation technique, to take advantage of the performance of CitySim and Energy Plus models and to include processes at different scales.

LESO-PB, EPFL2015

Velux Lab: innovation between art and science

Arianna Brambilla

2013

Novel models towards predictive control of advanced building systems and occupant comfort in buildings

Nikolaos Zarkadis

EPFL2015

Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the Quartier Nord: objective zero-power

Jérôme Henri Kämpf, Dasaraden Mauree, Jean-Louis Scartezzini, Yang Yao

LESO-PB, EPFL2015

Technical and architectural energy strategies for the smart living lab, a sustainable building with reliable environmental objectives

Velux Lab: innovation between art and science

Novel models towards predictive control of advanced building systems and occupant comfort in buildings

Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the Quartier Nord: objective zero-power

Velux Lab: innovation between art and science

Novel models towards predictive control of advanced building systems and occupant comfort in buildings

Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the Quartier Nord: objective zero-power

Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the Quartier Nord: objective zero-power

Evaluation and optimization of renewable energy in the Quartier Nord: objective zero-power