Search results for "Building"

ALTERNATIVE MODELS FOR BUILDING ENERGY PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

2020

The research activity carried out during the three years of the PhD course attended, at the Engineering Department of the University of Palermo, was aimed at the identification of an alternative predictive model able to solve the traditional building thermal balance in a simple but reliable way, speeding up any first phase of energy planning. Nowadays, worldwide directives aimed at reducing energy consumptions and environmental impacts have focused the attention of the scientific community on improving energy efficiency in the building sector. The reduction of energy consumption and CO2 emissions for heating and cooling needs of buildings is an important challenge for the European Union, be…

Energy Use in the Building Sector and Climate Change: Modeling, Developments, and Future Trends

2020

Climate change is going to have significant impacts among a wide range of areas and domains, including the building sector, characterized by constructions which may not be designed to be resilient to the evolutions in the warming climate that will occur in the next decades. The chapter investigates methodologies and approaches connected to the assessment of the effects of climate change to the energy use within the building sector. Methodologies are compared and the most relevant future trends expected are traced for the current century.

Effect of Climate Change on Building Performance: the Role of Ventilative Cooling

2017

Climate Change represents a priority, due to the large variety of implications and importance that it has reached throughout the last decades. In an effort to address this global and local challenge and in order to restrict temperature rise to 2 °C over the next century, it will need to address this topic from several angles, as confirmed by the last COP meetings in Paris and in Marrakech. In this context, the paper presents the modelling and assessment of ventilative cooling applicability in the future of the Mediteranean area under the effects of climate change. Results show that natural ventilation will continue to be of paramount importance in the Mediterranean climate but its highest e…

Assessing the lighting systems flexibility for reducing and managing the power peaks in smart grids

2020

Abstract The application of “shiftable” or “modulable” load (i.e. washing machine, dishwasher, etc.) in a Smart Grid, can provide energy saving or modify the power flows in the grid, allowing a reduction of the electrical power peak. This paper explores the possibility to modulate the indoor artificial lighting to support this reduction. The study examines the impact of two different measures of power shaving. On the one hand, the change of Correlated Colour Temperature of the light source, and, on the other hand, the dimming of its luminous flux. The possibility to merge the above-mentioned technical solutions is also analyzed. Based on these strategies, several daily schedules of lighting…

Multi-Objective Building Envelope Optimization through a Life Cycle Assessment Approach

2019

This work describes a methodology for the identification of the optimal features for the envelope of a residential building. The optimization process allows minimizing operating energy consumption, investment costs and life cycle energy and environmental embodied impacts. A dynamic model for the estimation of building energy consumption during its use phase has been employed, while literature data were adopted for embodied energy and global warming potential impacts. The considered variables refer to the envelope of the building, i.e. external walls and roof insulation and external walls thermal mass. The model was obtained combining EnergyPlus building energy simulator and MOBO, a versatil…

Green Roofs’ End of Life: A Literature Review

2023

Green roofs are increasingly being used in urban settings because of the many benefits they are capable of providing. Because of their widespread use, the issue of how to conduct proper disposal of green roofs once they have reached their end of life is beginning to be raised. The present study is a review of the scientific literature published between 2007 and 2022. Specifically, the contribution of this review study is to clarify whether a waste scenario exists and if so, identify the methodological frameworks and/or criteria used in green roof-related studies to establish the end-of-life scenario of a given green roof, which will then be used to analyze its environmental and economic per…

Comparison between the performances of daylight linked control system at two different latitudes

2019

The aim of this work is to compare the performance of a daylight-linked control system installed and tested in two different case studies by means of a set of indices. The two case studies are characterized by different geometry, location and windows orientation. The first one is located at the ENEA premises in Lampedusa (IT, 35° 30' N); the second one is located in Palermo (IT, 38°6' N) on the third floor of the building 9 of the Department of Engineering if the University of Palermo. In both cases, the indices were calculated by using the same daylight-linked control system and the same end-use (office). The results were reported and analysed in order to demonstrate as the performances of…

Calculation of Energy Performance Indices of Daylight Linked Control Systems by Monitored Data

2017

The actual performances of Building Automation systems are often lower than the ideal ones. In order to investigate the actual performance of a Building Automation system for lighting control, a large stock of collected data, including indoor illuminance and absorbed electric power, have been presented and analysed in this paper. The measures have been taken during one year, in a laboratory located at the University of Palermo, where different lighting control systems, produced by two different manufacture companies, have been installed. As demonstrated in literature, many factors affecting energy savings’ evaluation in lighting control systems are the position and the typology of the senso…

Automated control systems for indoor lighting: from design to actual performances' assessment

In recent years, but already around 1980, many buildings have been equipped with Building Automation and Control (BAC) systems. These systems were applied as a normal upgrade of traditional systems in different field of the industrial sector. In general, they can be applied to the building plants in order to carry out a series of functions. The main benefits of the installation of this kind of system are well known. First of all, it has been shown that BACs systems installation increases the energy savings and because using many typologies of sensors (e.g. presence detectors to control lighting system) and because, by monitoring the data it is possible to modify plant’s strategies and also …

A simplified method for the indirect evaluation of the “embodied pollution” of natural stones (marble) working chain to be applied for achieving the …

2022

The constant push toward higher energy and environmental quality buildings makes the acquisition of excellence marks for products and materials, of which the building envelope is constituted, increasingly urgent. The recent European (EU) Commission Decision 2021/476 is applicable to marble used in construction. It sets out criteria that companies producing marble have to accomplish to obtain the EU Ecolabel brand. Unfortunately, some criteria such as, for example, those that refer to the application of the Environmental Management System, ISO 14001 and EMAS certifications, or those that concern the ISO 14067 as well as the Product Environment Footprint procedure, are difficult to apply for …