Search results for "Buildings"

Energy rehabilitation of a nursery school in Sicily: winter and summer behaviours

2004

Following a previous work, concerning the energy audit of a nursery school belonging to the public building park of the town of Palermo, some further analyses have been conducted. These mainly refer to the environmental performances of the school that are assessed with regards to different interventions involving the envelope (the glazed part, particularly) and the surrounding spaces. The interventions are hierarchised by means of suitable indicators concerning energy, environment and economy issues. Finally a simple graph is proposed that visually summarises these indicators for each proposed action.

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…

Energy measurements at Skarpnes zero energy homes in Southern Norway: Do the loads match up with the on-site energy production?

2017

Five houses are designed as zero-energy homes in Skarpnes, Norway. The energy goal is to achieve net zero-energy balance on an annual basis. The houses have heat pumps and solar cells (PV). Energy use and delivered energy have been monitored from June 2015. Variations between calculations and measurements are explained by technical and non-technical reasons. For the first year, higher than expected energy loads result in a solar energy cover factor of 65–87% of delivered electricity. The PV generation performs satisfactorily, hence, it may be possible to achieve energy goals during later years provided technical adjustments or behavioral changes. Acknowledgements. This report has been writt…

The BAC factor method: Application to a real Italian not-residential building

2016

The paper focuses the evaluation of the impact of Building Automation Control (BAC) systems on not-residential buildings. In particular, this work shows how the control, monitoring and automation actions considered by the European Standard EN 15232 can influence the electric and thermal energy consumptions of the University of Palermo DEIM (Department of Energy, Information Engineering and Mathematical Models) building. After evaluating the building energy consumptions, by using the CEI Guide 205-18, the BAC systems are chosen and sized and an economic evaluation of their installation cost is also carried out.

Redesign of a Rural Building in a Heritage Site in Italy: Towards the Net Zero Energy Target

2017

In order to achieve the ambitious objective of decarbonising the economy, it is mandatory, especially in Europe and in Italy, to include the retrofitting of existing buildings. In a country where a large share of existing buildings have heritage value, it is important to design effective retrofit solutions also in historical buildings. In this context, the paper describes the 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, and its energy uses were thoroughly investigated. A building model was developed in the TRNSYS environment and its performances validated. The valid…

An Overview on Solar Shading Systems for Buildings

2014

Abstract In recent years, different types of solar shading devices have been proposed, depending on building orientation, location, window characteristics, etc. They can contribute to improve or worsen building thermal and lighting performances both from an energy and comfort point of view. The present paper reports a critical analysis of some studies that investigate shading devices’ effects on building thermal and/or lighting performances. This article points out the difficulty in comparing the different results given the lack of uniformity between the studies, since they analysed buildings with different characteristics, locations and using various indices. Therefore a protocol to carry …

Transient Modelling of Thermal Conditions in Test Buildings Including Radiation

2015

Abstract To increase the energy efficiency of buildings in Latvia's climate a comparative study with five experimental test buildings have been set up in Riga, Latvia. Different thermo physical quantities such as temperature, humidity, air velocity, etc. were monitored to better understand different behaviour of the building envelope. This gives an excellent validation possibility for the CFD model that in future could predict conditions in buildings with different envelopes. Previously a stationary model and transient model were considered without taking into consideration the thermal radiation. This study continues the previous work that was done and proposes a transient model which takes…

Allocation of actuators and sensors for coupled-adjacent-building vibration attenuation

2013

An actuator and sensor allocation approach is proposed for the design of coupled-adjacent-building vibration suppression under seismic excitation. This paper first establishes a full-order model of adjacent buildings with the location information of actuators and sensors. Then, the order of the model is reduced via modal cost analysis, by retaining the modes contributing the most. In view of the fact that the output powers of the actuators are limited, this paper brings forward a mixed H∞/GH2 control. By considering that not all the states of the system can be measured by the sensors, a dynamic output feedback controller is designed. The genetic algorithm is employed to obtain the locations…