Search results for " Buildings"

Environmental sustainability in non-residential buildings by automating and optimization LENI index

2018

Directive 2002/91 / EC as amended by 2010/31 / EU introduces procedures for energy certification aimed to determine, through the numerical indicators, the overall energy efficiency of the buildings, but notes the thermal and electric consumption. Often, the power consumption is incorrectly underestimated, this consumption would to be considered with great attention. In fact, compared to a committed capacity of less, compared to thermal plants, have times of utilization often far higher, leading to energy requirements to levels similar or even higher than those thermal, being the conversion factor of the electrical energy increasingly high. Leaving aside the procedural scheme energy certific…

A review on optimization and cost-optimal methodologies in low-energy buildings design and environmental considerations

2019

Abstract The topic of low-energy buildings received a widespread and growing interest in last years, thanks to energy saving policies of developed countries. The design of a low-energy building is addressed with energy saving measures and renewable energy generation, but the correct assessment of phenomena occurring in a building usually requires to perform dynamic simulations and to analyze multiple scenarios to attain the optimal solution. The optimality of a technical solution may be subject to contrasting constraints and objectives. For this reason, designers may employ mathematical optimization techniques, a non-familiar topic to most of building designers. In this paper, a review on o…

Electricity Consumption Analysis of Tertiary Buildings: An Empirical Approach for Two University Campuses

2020

An empirical approach for the analysis of energy consumption of existing buildings of the tertiary sector is presented in this study. It allowed the organization and management of large amounts of data according to different timeframes and helped to focus on leading issues about energy uses, and dealt with compatibility with tariff structure. The analysis method, which implied a powerful graphical representation of the results, allowed us to detect critical issues in electricity energy management for public buildings and improve their energy performance. Furthermore, the authors proposed a set of electricity consumption indexes (ECIs) that gave useful insight into the main hotspots. The bas…

Utilizing the tourist Ecolabel-award scheme for singling out useful criteria for assessing a new environmental brand for residential buildings.

2009

The Eco-label scheme is becoming ever more important in the environmental certification of products and services, especially in light of the recent ambitious aim of containing greenhouse emissions and improving the efficiency of utilizing energy sources and resources. A recently-introduced hypothesis concerns the European eco-label scheme relating to buildings, due in part to the awareness that the construction industry is of primary importance to the whole economic and social life of states. This scheme should adopt an integrated approach to environmental problems and include construction, day-to-day management and the possible disposal of building materials, throughout the life cycle of t…

Energy performance of architectural heritage: characteristics of the historic buildings in Palermo

2015

The current researches on the energy and environmental improvement of historic architecture aim to develop strategies respectful of its aesthetic and material features. This requires a deep knowledge of the characters strictly connected to a local context. This paper focuses on the historic architecture of Palermo and analyses, among its features, those which particularly influence its energy and environmental performance. For this purpose the building typologies introduced by the urban regulations can be useful for a categorization on the basis of the most recent European researches.

Nano-structured materials in new and existing buildings: to improved performance and saving of energy

2009

Improving well-being in buildings, in relation to energy conservation, represents a great challenge. In southern Italy a basic problem is that of keeping buildings cool in the summer months. This problem affects not only newly-erected buildings, but also the large number of existing buildings, some of which are of historical importance. Nano-technology represents an excellent opportunity to harness the salvage of existing buildings to the living requirements of contemporary society. The use of nano-structured materials in newly-erected buildings will lead to improved performance and a considerable saving of energy. Above all, the use of nano-structured materials in existing buildings will p…

Innovative control logics for a rational utilization of electric loads and air-conditioning systems in a residential building

2015

The paper focuses on the evaluation of the impact on residential buildings of innovative control logics defined for a rational utilization of the electric loads and air-conditioning systems. The control logics are implementable thanks to a Decision Support and Energy Management Systems developed by the same authors and easily installable in new and still-existing houses. The paper shows how a significant reduction of the primary energy consumption can be obtained by controlling the air-conditioning units together with the other electric loads of the house. After having explained how the control logics operate, a simulation tool is described, developed for a preliminary evaluation of their e…

Energy flexibility in Mediterranean buildings: a case-study in Sicily

2020

Since the building sector is responsible for 40% of the world’s electricity demand, it is essential to act on it in order to reduce emissions of climate change gases on a global scale, as expressed also in the latest directive on the energy performance of buildings. A design approach that focuses on the energy flexibility of buildings can contribute to the improvement of its energy-environmental performances. In this context, the objective of the study is the analysis of the energy performance of a residential building in Sicily and the definition of strategies aimed at increasing its energy flexibility. In particular, the case study is a 631 m2 single-family house, modeled and simulated in…

Design, Optimization and Modelling Issues of Net Zero Energy Solar Buildings

2010

Sequential design of multioverlapping controllers for structural vibration control of tall buildings under seismic excitation

2012

In this article, a computationally effective strategy to obtain multioverlapping controllers via the inclusion principle is applied to design a state-feedback multioverlapping linear-quadratic regulator controller for a 20-story building. The proposed semidecentralized controller only requires state information of neighboring stories to compute the corresponding control actions. This particular information exchange configuration allows introducing a dramatic reduction in the transmission range required for a wireless implementation of the communications system. More specifically, just a one-story transmission range is required by the proposed multioverlapping controller, while a full-buildi…