On the Energy Performance Design of a Skilled Nursing Facility Building

In Europe, the criteria for designing new buildings are regulated by a set of European Directives and national laws having as a goal the creation of net zero energy buildings by the year 2020. Moreover, according to 2010/31/EU Directive after 31 December 2018, new buildings occupied and owned by public authorities must be nearly zero-energy buildings. The low energy consumption must be accompanied by well-defined thermal characteristics of the building envelope (both opaque and transparent components) and HVAC systems, and must ensure acceptable internal thermal comfort conditions. An interesting case study, proposed in this work, is represented by the elderly nursing building “RelaXXI” which hosts dependent people who require 24-hour special assistance and medical care. Designers focused on the indoor environmental quality as the main goal of the project and the HVAC system has been designed pursuing the maximum integration with the building and its architecture. The aims of this paper are to (1) describe the main design characteristics of the RelaXXI building, (2) analyze the results obtained by dynamic simulation of heating and cooling energy demands, and (3) present the results of performance monitoring completed to date

Analysis and results of a monitoring campaign in an elderly nursing home in Italy

This paper describes the monitoring activity performed during the summer of 2014 in an energy-efficient elderly nursing home in Northern Italy. The ASHRAE Performance Measurement Protocol was used as a reference protocol to perform this energy audit. Moreover, the data from the monitoring activity, including thermal comfort and air quality levels, allowed the facility manager to correspondingly decrease the energy consumption. For example, the energy demand for chilled and hot water pumping was decreased by about 10%-15% just by modifying the related availability schedules for secondary loop pumps (e.g., turning pumps off at appropriate times). Assumptions and boundary conditions used to size HVAC systems, as well as to perform energy audits, usually come from rough approximations or statistical generalizations and may differ significantly from the ones taking place in actual operation. This could lead to actual building energy bills that are far from the ones taken into account in terms of economic feasibility evaluations, with consequent differences in the real pay-back time. In order to assess the statistical accuracy of building energy consumption forecasts as well as to collect usage profiles for energy audits closer to the actual operating conditions, monitoring HVAC systems is crucial. Of course, this activity can also be used to test new control strategies in actual operation as well as to identify off-normal operating events or evaluate possible HVAC system oversizing. The present paper shows the importance of a standardized monitoring activity, also in new buildings, which when combined with careful tuning leads to further energy reductions over the ones predicted in the design phase