0000000000933605
AUTHOR
G. Ciulla
The redesign of an Italian building to reach net zero energy performances: A case study of the SHC Task 40 - ECBCS Annex 52
In the framework of international actions to reduce the energy requirements and greenhouse gases emissions due to buildings, a new International Energy Agency task has been recently established in order to study Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs). The commonly shared concept of NZEB, is a building whose annual balance of energy consumptions tends to zero. This concept is still too imprecise and the authors of this paper participate to the activities of SubTask B of IEA Task40 with the aim of establishing an internationally agreed understanding on NZEBs. The task is based on a common methodology for identifying and refining design approaches and tools to support industry adoption of innovativ…
Historical Buildings in protected areas in Italy: a re-design study of a rural building
Historic and traditional buildings, including rural ones, are a territorial resource in Europe and constitute an integral part of the European’s cultural heritage. However they are often characterized by poor energy performances and a large potential for energy retrofit actions. On the other hand, the hardest part of retrofitting such buildings is the limited invasiveness that such actions need to have on the historical and heritage value of the building itself. The paper describes an experience of re-design of an existing rural building located in Sicily, inside the ancient Greeks “Valley of the Temples”. An energy audit was performed on the building, its energy uses thoroughly investigate…
A photovoltaic panel coupled with a Phase Changing Material heat storage system in hot climates
Nowadays, there is a great impulse in the field of photovoltaic cell systems (PV) to develop new devices with better energy conversion performances and higher cost effectiveness. This paper is focused on the design and development of a modified PV system, consisting of a normal PV panel coupled with a Phase Change Material (PCM). PCMs are "latent" energy storage materials, using chemical bonds to store and release heat. The system is based on the idea that decreasing the operating temperature of the panel causes an increase in its energy conversion efficiency. A theoretical analysis of the system was accomplished by using COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS, a partial differential equations (PDEs) solver. …
Software for weather databases management and construction of reference years
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a procedure that permits, starting from a sufficiently long database of time series, the construction of a Reference Year (RY) of hourly weather data according to the rules of ISO 15927-4 standard. In order to facilitate the management of the weather database and to allow the users to easily generate the file, an algorithm has been implemented in Microsoft Visual Basic for Application (VBA). By this way, the application of the ISO 15927-4 is possible even using a popular software tool such as Microsoft Excel or Access without any other expensive specialized software. Such tool allows to fulfil all the procedures mentioned in ISO 15927- 4 giving as …
A net zero energy building in italy: Design studies to reach the net zero energy target
In the framework of international actions to reduce the energy requirements and greenhouse gases emissions due to buildings, a new International Energy Agency task has been recently established in order to study Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEBs). The commonly shared concept of NZEB, is a building whose annual balance of energy consumptions tends to zero. This concept is still too imprecise and the authors of this paper participate to the activities of SubTask B of IEA Task40 with the aim of establishing an internationally agreed understanding on NZEBs. The task is based on a common methodology for identifying and refining design approaches and tools to support industry adoption of innovativ…
A PC-based instrument for automatic monitoring and control of a CPVT power plant
A PC-based instrument has been developed for the monitoring and control of a concentrated photovoltaic and thermal (CPVT) power plant. The instrument allows acquiring both electrical and thermal quantities. Moreover it implements the solar tracking algorithm used to optimize the power production.