Energy use in residential buildings: Impact of building automation control systems on energy performance and flexibility

This work shows the results of a research activity aimed at characterizing the energy habits of Italian residential users. In detail, by the energy simulation of a buildings sample, the opportunity to implement a demand/response program (DR) has been investigated. Italian residential utilities are poorly electrified and flexible loads are low. The presence of an automation system is an essential requirement for participating in a DR program and, in addition, it can allow important reductions in energy consumption. In this work the characteristics of three control systems have been defined, based on the services incidence on energy consumptions along with a sensitivity analysis on some energy drivers. Using the procedure established by the European Standard EN 15232, the achievable energy and economic savings have been evaluated. Finally, a financial analysis of the investments has been carried out, considering also the incentives provided by the Italian regulations. The payback time is generally not very long: depending on the control system features it varies from 7 to 10 years; moreover, the automation system installation within dwellings is a relatively simple activity, which is characterized by a limited execution times and by an initial expenditure ranging in 1000 € to 4000 €, related to the three sample systems

Affordances, constraints and information flows as ‘leverage points’ in design for sustainable behaviour

Copyright @ 2012 Social Science Electronic PublishingTwo of Donella Meadows' 'leverage points' for intervening in systems (1999) seem particularly pertinent to design for sustainable behaviour, in the sense that designers may have the scope to implement them in (re-)designing everyday products and services. The 'rules of the system' -- interpreted here to refer to affordances and constraints -- and the structure of information flows both offer a range of opportunities for design interventions to in fluence behaviour change, and in this paper, some of the implications and possibilities are discussed with reference to parallel concepts from within design, HCI and relevant areas of psychology

Scenarios for the development of smart grids in the UK: synthesis report

‘Smart grid’ is a catch-all term for the smart options that could transform the ways society produces, delivers and consumes energy, and potentially the way we conceive of these services. Delivering energy more intelligently will be fundamental to decarbonising the UK electricity system at least possible cost, while maintaining security and reliability of supply. Smarter energy delivery is expected to allow the integration of more low carbon technologies and to be much more cost effective than traditional methods, as well as contributing to economic growth by opening up new business and innovation opportunities. Innovating new options for energy system management could lead to cost savings of up to £10bn, even if low carbon technologies do not emerge. This saving will be much higher if UK renewable energy targets are achieved. Building on extensive expert feedback and input, this report describes four smart grid scenarios which consider how the UK’s electricity system might develop to 2050. The scenarios outline how political decisions, as well as those made in regulation, finance, technology, consumer and social behaviour, market design or response, might affect the decisions of other actors and limit or allow the availability of future options. The project aims to explore the degree of uncertainty around the current direction of the electricity system and the complex interactions of a whole host of factors that may lead to any one of a wide range of outcomes. Our addition to this discussion will help decision makers to understand the implications of possible actions and better plan for the future, whilst recognising that it may take any one of a number of forms

Energy use in Urban Transport sector within the Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs) of three Italian Big Cities

Promising Renewable Energy solutions could be installed in cities, but they require specific morphological conditions as well as architectural integration. Transport sector is still neglected from a strong policy initiative. A first attempt along with a defined framework to attract economic resources as well as interested stakeholders is the Covenant of Mayors (CoM). Within this agreement, the Municipality has to design a plan, the so-called Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP). The plan must contain a clear outline of the strategy and relative actions to be taken by the local authority to reach its commitments in 2020, in terms of sustainability goals set by EU 20-20-20. The aim of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the differences of fuel usage and transport sector interaction in Italian urban scenarios, taking into account geographical and morphological constraints, and to compare the forecasts for 2020 and 2030scenarios, in accordance with European and National laws in force

Scenarios of energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction potential in the buildings sector in China to year 2050

As China’s rapid urbanization continues and urban dwellers become more affluent, energy use in buildings is expected to grow. To understand how this growth can be slowed, we explore four scenarios for Chinese buildings, ranging from a high-energy-demand scenario with no new energy policies to lowest energy demand under a techno-economic-potential scenario that assumes full deployment of cost-effective efficient and renewable technologies by 2050. We show that, in the high energy demand scenario, building energy demand has an average annual growth rate of about 2.8%, with slower growth rates in the other three scenarios. In all scenarios, CO2 emissions grow slower than energy, with building CO2 peaking around 2045 in the high energy demand scenario, and as early as 2030 in the techno-economic-potential scenario. We show that although various technological solutions, systems and practices can be very effective in minimizing building energy use, rigorous policies are needed to overcome multiple implementation barriers

On the Sensitivity of Deep Load Disaggregation to Adversarial Attacks

Non-intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) algorithms, commonly referred to as load disaggregation algorithms, are fundamental tools for effective energy management. Despite the success of deep models in load disaggregation, they face various challenges, particularly those pertaining to privacy and security. This paper investigates the sensitivity of prominent deep NILM baselines to adversarial attacks, which have proven to be a significant threat in domains such as computer vision and speech recognition. Adversarial attacks entail the introduction of imperceptible noise into the input data with the aim of misleading the neural network into generating erroneous outputs. We investigate the Fast Gradient Sign Method (FGSM), a well-known adversarial attack, to perturb the input sequences fed into two commonly employed CNN-based NILM baselines: the Sequence-to-Sequence (S2S) and Sequence-to-Point (S2P) models. Our findings provide compelling evidence for the vulnerability of these models, particularly the S2P model which exhibits an average decline of 20\% in the F1-score even with small amounts of noise. Such weakness has the potential to generate profound implications for energy management systems in residential and industrial sectors reliant on NILM models

How much do we spend to save? Calculating the embodied carbon costs of retrofit

The drive to reduce carbon emissions from domestic housing has led to a recent shift of focus from new-build to retrofit. However there are two significant differences. Firstly more work is needed to retrofit existing housing to the same energy efficiency standards as new-build. Secondly the remaining length of service life is potentially shorter. This implies that the capital expenditure – both financial and carbon - of retrofit may be disproportionate to the savings gained over the remaining life. However the Government’s definition of low and zero carbon continues to exclude the capital (embodied) carbon costs of construction, which has resulted in a lack of data for comparison. The paper addresses this gap by reporting the embodied carbon costs of retrofitting four individual pilot properties in Rampton Drift, part of an Eco-Town Demonstrator Project in Cambridgeshire. Through collecting details of the materials used and their journeys from manufacturer to site, the paper conducts a ‘cradle-to-gate’ life cycle carbon assessment for each property. The embodied carbon figures are calculated using a software tool being developed by the Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge. The key aims are to assess the real embodied carbon costs of retrofit of domestic properties, and to test the new tool; it is hoped that the methodology, the tool and the specific findings will be transferable to other projects. Initial changes in operational energy as a result of the retrofit works will be reported and compared with the embodied carbon costs when presenting this paper

Simulation support for internet-based energy services

The rapidly developing Internet broadband network offers new opportunities for deploying a range of energy, environment and health-related services for people in their homes and workplaces. Several of these services can be enabled or enhanced through the application of building simulation. This paper describes the infrastructure for e-services under test within a European research project and shows the potential for simulation support for these services

Energy Saving Obligations and White Certificates : Ideas and Considerations for the Transport Sector

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