Influence of Occupant Behaviour Lifestyle on an Italian Social Housing

The Post-Carbon City concept has a decisive effect on the building design, in terms of envelope and system technologies, and, especially, of interaction between the occupant and the building itself. Occupant behaviour lifestyle is one of the most significant driving factors of uncertainty in the prediction of building energy use and thus represents a fundamental aspect that is necessary to modelling. This study examines the difference between the energy consumptions assessed during design phase and the monitored ones for a social housing. Dynamic simulation was employed to demonstrate the impact of occupant behavior lifestyles and household composition on energy uses

Energy Consumption and Thermal Comfort Assessment in Retail Stores: Monitoring and Dynamic Simulation Applied to a Case Study in Turin

Maintaining suitable microclimate internal conditions in retails store is of great importance, because thermal comfort needs to be satisfied for both customers and employees. In the present work, energy consumptions and microclimate quality assessment of a retail store are shown. Buildings dynamic simulation tool, and energy and environmental monitoring were both used for the building climate quality and energy efficiency investigation. The paper shows how monitoring data, combined with dynamic simulation, allow to improve the correct system control increasing energy efficiency, and enhancing moreover the indoor thermal comfort in retails

Design and Construction of an nZEB in Piedmont Region, North Italy

AbstractNowadays in nZEB designing it is fundamental taking into account both the energy and the economic perspective right from the preliminary phases of the project. Success in realizing nZEB lies in finding the right balance between energy performances, architectural quality and costs, which include investment, maintenance and running costs, incurred by the project owner during a defined period.This paper analyzes CorTau House in terms of architectural aspects, energy performances and economic viability. It represents a significant Italian design experience in which the architectural quality of the refurbishment of a traditional rural building is combined with high-performing energy solutions

Characterization of Building Thermal Energy Consumption at the Urban Scale

The ongoing urban transition toward decarbonized energy systems has raised the attention on local energy planning practices. Besides the multiple actors involved in the planning process, the complexity of the urban energy systems requires the elaboration of heterogeneous data. In such contest, the paper introduces and compares two GIS-based ethodologies for supporting the spatial characterization of the local residential built environment in terms of building distribution and space heating energy consumption. Starting from the assessment of residential consumption, a third method for the characterization of non-residential building thermal energy consumption is proposed. From a bottom-up perspective, in both residential models all the buildings are geo-referenced and clustered according to their thermo-physical characteristics. From a top-down perspective, energy balance data are used to calibrate the bottom-up results and to match the total building loads. The procedure, tested on the city of Turin as case study, allows assessing the energy use of buildings and to create urban energy maps. The energy spatial characterization of a territory is the basis for performing short and long-term scenarios analysis. Results of this method can be useful to: i. decision maker to understand the current state of the territorial energy consumption to identify critical energy intense areas; ii. citizens for visualising their energy consumption and iii. researchers for setting up the basis of further urban analysis

Improving energy modeling of large building stock through the development of archetype buildings

12th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Associatio

Profiling Occupant Behaviour in Danish Dwellings using Time Use Survey Data - Part I: Data Description and Activity Profiling

The human interaction with the building is a key cause of uncertainty when predicting energy consump- tion of buildings. Building occupants affect building energy use directly and indirectly by interacting with building energy systems, for example, by adjusting thermostats, switching lights on/off, using electri- cal devices and opening/closing windows. The occupants’ daily activity profiles and occupancy patterns clearly shape the timing and magnitude of energy demand in households. Modelling energy-related hu- man activities throughout the day, therefore, is a crucial task for prediction of energy use and, conse- quently, to reduce the gap between real and predicted building energy use. This study modelled data gathered in the diary-based Danish Time Use Survey (TUS) 2008/09 of 9640 individuals from 4679 households. Individuals’ daily activities were logged in 10-min time increments for 24 h, starting and ending at 04:00, during both weekdays and weekends. The aims of this study were to (i) profile energy-related daily activities of occupants during different seasons and weekdays/weekends (ii) investigate time-related characteristics of activities such as starting and ending times and durations, and (iii) profile occupancy patterns for weekdays/weekends for different household types. The outcomes provide valuable input for building energy simulation for bridging the gap between simulated and real energy consumption in the Danish residential sector; typical occupancy profiles for different household types for different days of the week are freely available online[1]

Light switch behaviour: occupant behaviour stochastic models in office buildings

It is common knowledge that occupants’ behaviour on building control systems plays a significant role to achieve comfortable indoor environmental conditions. Moreover, different research studies have shown how occupants’ behaviour also has a huge influence on energy consumption. Consequently, since the building sector still consumes nearly half of the total amount of energy used in Europe and because occupants’ comfort should be one of the major aim of a building construction, this influential factor should be further investigated. Reliable information concerning occupants’ behaviours in a building could help to better evaluate building energy performances and design robustness, as well as, it could help supporting the development of occupants’ education to energy awareness. Concerning occupant behaviour related to indoor lighting systems, many studies have been made regarding occupants’ feelings and performances to certain visual stimuli due to different light systems. Nevertheless, occupants’ interactions with lighting control systems needs further investigation also because few models to predict switching operations have been implemented in energy simulation programmes. This study proposes probabilistic models to describe occupants’ switching on-off control over lighting. They have been developed using a multivariate logistic regression based on measurements of indoor climate parameters, outdoor environmental conditions and artificial lights “switch on/off” actions. Measurements were made over eleven months for three different office rooms. Two predictive light-switch behaviour models were inferred in relation to the number of actions carried out by the users (active or passive). The models are presented and critically discussed in this paper. The study extends the information on environmental parameters influencing occupants’ manual control of the lighting system in offices and energy consumption