Exploring easy-implementable adaptation strategies to climate change scenarios of existing office buildings: a case study in the Swiss context

European energy policies are aimed at increasing the climate resilience of infrastructure, including new and existing buildings. The implications of future ambient conditions on the energy and environmental performance in buildings and respective adaptation strategies still need to be thoroughly investigated. The aim of this simulation-based study is to estimate the effect of selected future weather scenarios by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), on the energy demand of a Swiss office building. The results showed that the cooling demand can increase up to 146% in future scenarios. Finally, some preliminary alternative design and operational solutions were explored to enhance building resilience to climate change.

The role of distributed energy systems in European energy transition

Silvia Coccolo, Louis Marc Bruno Delannoy, Dasaraden Mauree, Amarasinghage Tharindu Dasun Perera, Salil Puri, Jean-Louis Scartezzini

This study presents a comprehensive analysis on the energy demand and supply of typical European city centers for present time and 2050 horizon according to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) climatic scenario A1B. Building and urban archetypes are modelled to represent the building stock considering thermal characteristics and local climatic conditions of typical city centres in European cities in order to understand the demand. Subsequently, present and future heating and cooling demands for these urban architypes are computed considering present and future climate as well as renovation scenarios. Microgrid systems are designed for the urban archetypes to evaluate the potential for renewable energy integration. Results of the study reveal that a notable reduction in energy demand can be anticipated due to the building renovation. Furthermore, the study reveals that the average renewable energy generation within the micro-grid can be reached up to 52% using solar PV and wind energy after considering grid curtailments for 2050 scenario considering lower grid curtailments. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV2019

On the Adaptation of Building Controls to the Envelope and the Occupants

David Daum

The sun is the biggest known source of energy in our solar system. We feel its strength when it gets hot during the the day and we notice its absence during the night when we feel cold. So as to be less dependent on the sun as an energy source, we implemented additional heating and cooling sources to maintain the temperature within a comfortable range. The downside to this is that the majority of energy consumed within the housing sector is used up on the heating and cooling alone. To profit from the vast energy source of the sun we propose a user-adaptive and building-adaptive blind control for residential buildings, that is implemented in prefabricated modules for facade renovation. User-adaptive means that it is the occupant who is responsible for the temperature control within the home. Building-adaptive, in this context, means that the temperature control is established automatically without any user input. Through the evaluation of occupant queries we have shown that a general measure for thermal comfort is not possible for all occupants. Consequently, there is a need for a personalized measure of thermal comfort. In order to create this the occupant enters votes via the interface; from this we deduced statistically the probability of comfort relative to the indoor temperature. According to the profile the control sets its target temperature. The profile steadily adapts the user's preferences and through this we can also capture seasonal changes in comfort temperature. This guarantees that at each point in time the control system knows the desired temperature and is taking action to achieve it. The adaption to the building is achieved with the fitting of a simple thermal building model with data collected by the sensors of the control system. We showed that the monitored data sufficiently fits the model. With the help of the simple model we evaluated different control strategies and optimized them according to the thermal profile. For our performance tests we conducted computer simulations as well as a 6-month field study. For the simulations, a specific test bed was suggested that would assess the saving potential, which can then be compared to the performance of the tested control. Results showed that the suggested control system is capitalizing on most of the achievable energy savings and thermal comfort. A 6-month field study in the LESO-PB building was carried out to test the impact on energy demand as well as comfort under real conditions. It appeared that the automatically controlled office needed only approximately 50% of the average heating energy that was used in the manually controlled offices. Furthermore, the probability of thermal comfort was, on average, 10% higher in the automatically controlled offices when compared to those that were controlled manually.

EPFL2011

Simulation of Urban Energy Flow: A Graph Theory Inspired Approach

Jérôme Henri Kämpf, Diane Perez, Jean-Louis Scartezzini

Following the increased consciousness regarding global warming and other environmental issues, there is a growing urge in cities for a more rational energy supply and use in buildings. In parallel, the range of possible actions has broaden, from building refurbishment and construction options, through local energy production (solar panels, heat pumps) to the larger scale re-use of waste heat, green electricity production or trading. This evolution has increased the complexity of urban energy management, and more information regarding the energy efficiency of the energy demand and supply is required to evaluate possible improvements. Crude models fail to include all aspects of this complexity, while specialised simulation tools make global assessments and comparisons difficult.There is thus an opportunity for research to provide tools dealing with the increased complexity of urban energy flow to study the numerous options available to decrease the primary energy use of buildings and the related greenhouse gas emissions.Focusing on the scale of a few hundred buildings, we model in this paper the disaggregated energy flow, from the resources through networks and energy conversion system towards the energy use in buildings for distinct services, as an oriented graph. Combining the limited available data with existing simulation tools and energy consumption data, a new graph theory inspired simulation method is formulated. The resulting detailed picture of energy flow can give access to a large amount of information but, most importantly, will provide a unied tool to compare energy effciency scenarios regarding a broad range of technological aspects of energy demand and supply.

EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO-PB)2013

On the Adaptation of Building Controls to the Envelope and the Occupants

David Daum

EPFL2011