Integrated energy performance evaluation of buildings

Our buildings consume some 40 % of all our energy use, more than any other sector. They harbour enormous potential to save energy and reduce greenhouse emissions, and thus play a fundamental role in climate change mitigation. Consequently, policy makers impose increasingly strict demands with regard to their design energy performance. But several studies show that the actual performance of buildings often differs substantially from its performance on the design table.  Today, there is little transparency with regard to the actual energy performance of buildings and the individual impact of insulation quality, efficiency of building services, and users. The main aim of the current project is to empower the building sector with tailored tools to reliably assess these factors, and provide them with actionable feedback. On a scientific level, we aim to further develop the parameter estimation methods we need to assess the energy performance buildings on different scales. On a technological level, we aim to leverage our tool prototype to create a monitoring, test and analysis tool that integrates a wide range of readily available sensors and actuators, and provides automated analyses through an intuitive online platform that offers users ample insight through custom data and analysis dashboards. For this current project, we focus our exploitation goals on Energy Service Companies (ESCOs). They can directly benefit from our tool to assess energy performance of the buildings before and after retrofit measures, and collaborating with them offers ample learning opportunities.

Keywords:buildings, insulation quality, energy performance, performance gap, compliance checking

Disciplines:Conservation-restoration techniques