6,174 research outputs found
Screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit
This chapter discusses screening of energy efficient technologies for industrial buildings' retrofit
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Stakeholder engagement in sustainable housing refurbishment in the UK
The UK government is committed to effectively implement a viable sustainable agenda in the social housing sector. To this end housing associations and local authorities are being encouraged to improve the environmental performance of their new and existing homes. Whilst much attention has been focused on new housing (e.g. the Code for Sustainable Homes) little effort has been focussed on improving the 3.9 (approx) million homes maintained and managed by the public sector (in England), which, given the low rate of new build and demolition (<1% in England), will represent approximately 70% of the public housing stock in 2050. Thus, if UK is to achieve sustainable public housing the major effort will have to focus on the existing stock. However, interpreting the sustainability agenda for an existing housing portfolio is not a straight foreword activity. In addition to finding a ‘technical’ solution, landlords also haveto address the socio-economic issues that balance quality of expectations of tenants with the economic realities of funding social housing refurbishment. This paper will report the findings of a qualitative study
(participatory approach) that examined the processes by which a large public landlord sought to develop
a long-term sustainable housing strategy. Through a series of individual meetings and group workshops
the research team identified: committed leadership; attitudes towards technology; social awareness; and
collective understanding of the sustainability agenda as key issues that the organisation needed to address
in developing a robust and defendable refurbishment strategy. The paper concludes that the challenges
faced by the landlord in improving the sustainability of their existing stock are not primarily technical, but
socio-economic. Further, while the economic challenges: initial capital cost; lack of funding; and pay-back
periods can be overcome, if the political will exists, by fiscal measures; the social challenges: health & wellbeing;
poverty; security; space needs; behaviour change; education; and trust; are much more complex in
nature and will require a coordinated approach from all the stakeholders involved in the wider community
if they are to be effectively addressed. The key challenge to public housing landlords is to develop
mechanisms that can identify and interpret the complex nature of the social sustainability agenda in a way
that reflects local aspirations (although the authors believe the factors will exist in all social housing communities, their relative importance is likely to vary between communities) whilst addressing Government
agendas
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Energy Information Systems: From the Basement to the Boardroom
A significant buildings energy reduction opportunity exists in the office sector, given that this market segment typically is an early adopter of new technology. There is a rising trend towards smart and connected offices through the internet of things (IoT) that provides new opportunities for operational efficiency and environmental sustainability practices. Leading commercial real estate companies have begun to shift from individual building automation systems (BAS) to partially integrated and automated systems such as energy information systems (EIS). In both the United States and India, organizations are seeking operational excellence, enhanced tenant relationships, and topline growth. Hence it is imperative to engage the executives with decision-making power, by tapping into their interest in sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and innovation. This expansion of interest can enable data-driven decisions, strong energy investments, and deeper energy benefits, and would drive innovation in this field. However, none of this would be possible without robust, consistent building energy information to provide visibility across all the levels of decision making, i.e. from the basement where the facilities staff take operational action to the boardroom where the executives make investment decisions.
Price, security, and ease of use remain barriers to the adoption and pervasive use of promising EIS technologies in commercial office buildings. We believe that these barriers can be addressed through the development of ready, simplified, consistent, commercially available, low-cost EIS-in-a-box packages, that have a pre-defined set of hardware components and software features and functionality that are pertinent to a particular building sector. These simplified, sector-specific EIS packages can help to obviate the need for customization, and enhance ease of use, thereby enabling scale-up, in order to facilitate building energy savings. The EIS-in-a-box are adaptable in both U.S. and Indian office buildings, and potentially beyond these two countries
Impact analysis of electric vehicle demand on demand profile, electricity charges and system emissions of Rochester Institute of Technology
In view of growing concerns of greenhouse gas emissions, electrification in the transportation fleet is expected to increase globally. To accommodate the incoming increase in energy demand from vehicle charging, the existing electrical network should be managed in a way that the load is operated with no electrical instability. Peak demand occurrences which could be measured daily, annually, weekly, monthly or annually should be avoided in order to maintain the health of the electrical network and reduce demand charges billed to the end energy user. Moreover, depending on the emissions factor of the fuel mix used in a region for energy generation the amount of emissions is influenced by the overall network’s demand through different times of the day.
This thesis addresses the effects of increasing levels of electric vehicle demand on Rochester Institute of Technology’s circuit demand profile, electricity charges and system emissions. The thesis will inform the reader about the potential changes in peak demand behavior, peak months, peak times and peak days as electric vehicle usage increases across campus. In addition, the electric vehicle penetration levels and times at which changes in overall peak demand behavior, electricity charge trend and max emissions through the day occur, will be presented in this thesis paper.
The results obtained through the impact analyses suggested that overall changes in circuit behavior start to become noticeable when electric vehicle users reach 50 times the current number of users on campus. In addition, impacts of electric vehicle demand on the overall circuit’s peak occurrences are observed to shift from afternoon to morning hours as fleet electrification increases on campus. Potential electric vehicle charging times to manage the increasing demand on campus and maintaining a leveled overall demand profile, reducing electricity charges and system emissions will be suggested in this paper
Variation of household electricity consumption and potential impact of outdoor PM2.5 concentration: a comparison between Singapore and Shanghai
The auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach was used to study the relationships between the monthly household electricity consumption and outdoor PM2.5 concentration with the consideration of ambient temperature and the number of rainy days for Singapore and Shanghai. It is shown that there are significant long-run relationships between the household electricity consumption and the regressors for both Singapore and Shanghai. For Singapore, a 20% increase in the PM2.5 concentration of a single month is in the long-run significantly related to a 0.8% increase in the household electricity consumption. This corresponds to an electricity overconsumption of 5.0 GWh, a total of 0.7–1.0 million USD in electricity cost, and 2.1 kilotons of CO2 emission associated with electricity generation. For Shanghai, a 20% decrease in the PM2.5 concentration of a single month is in the long-run significantly related to a 2.2% decrease in the household electricity consumption. This corresponds to a 35.0 GWh decrease in the overall household electricity consumption, 1.6–5.1 million USD decrease in electricity cost, and 17.5 kilotons of CO2 emission. The results suggest that the cost of electricity consumption should be included in the economic cost analysis of PM2.5 pollution in the future. A 1 °C increase in the monthly temperature is in the long-run significantly related to a 13.6% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Singapore, while a 30 degree days increase in heating & cooling days (HCDD) is in the long-run significantly related to a 24.9% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Shanghai. A 5-day increase in the number of rainy days per month is in the long-run significantly related to a 3.0% and 5.8% increase in the monthly electricity consumption for Singapore and Shanghai, respectively
Mining typical load profiles in buildings to support energy management in the smart city context
Mining typical load profiles in buildings to
drive energy management strategies is a fundamental
task
to be addressed in a smart
city environment. In this work,
a general framework
on load profiles characterisation in buildings based on the
recent
scientific
literature
is proposed
. The
process
relies on the combination of different pattern recognition and classification algorithms in order
to provide a robust insight of the energy usage patterns at different level
s and at different scales (from single building to stock of
buildings).
Several im
plications related to energy profiling in buildings, including tariff design, demand side management and
advanced energy diagnos
is are discussed.
Moreover,
a robust methodology
to mine typical energy patterns to
support advanced
energy
diagnosis
in buildin
gs is introduced
by analysing the monitored energy consumption of
a cooling/heating mechanical room
Chalmers Campus as a Testbed for Intelligent Grids and Local Energy Systems
This paper presents an overview of a testbed for intelligent distribution grids, local energy systems, and energy flexible buildings, which is being developed at the campus of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. It describes the test sites, the functionalities, and the planned demonstration activities within the scope of on-going research projects. The proposed demonstrations include a local energy market platform, energy management solutions for microgrids and smart buildings, as well as voltage control in distribution grids. The paper aims to show how the physical energy supply systems of the university are being adapted to integrate the communication and control set-ups that provide the technical requirements for smart grid interoperability. As an example, the on-site implementation of remote battery control is presented, where initial results show the feasibility and potential benefits of the external control. Finally, challenges and lessons learned during the development of the testbed are highlighted
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