A Smart Hybrid Energy System Grid for Energy Efficiency in Remote Areas for the Army

The current energy inefficiencies in relocatable temporary camps of the Armed Force troops create logistic challenges associated with fuel supply. The energy needs of these camps are primarily satisfied by diesel engine generators, which imply that a significant amount of fuel needs to be continuously provided to these camps, often built in remote areas. This paper presents an alternative solution, named Smart Hybrid Energy System (SHES), aiming towards significantly reducing the amount of fuel needed and minimizing transportation logistics while meeting camp energy demands. The SHES combines the existing diesel generators with solar power generation, energy storage, and waste heat recovery technologies, all connected to a microgrid, ensuring uninterrupted electricity and hot water supplies. All components are controlled by an energy management system that prioritizes output and switches between different power generators, ensuring operation at optimum efficiencies. The SHES components have been selected to be easily transportable in standard shipping 20 ft containers. The modularity of the solution, scalable from the base camp for 150 people, is designed according to available on-site renewable sources, allowing for energy optimization of different camp sizes in different climates

Super-insulated wooden envelopes in Mediterranean climate: Summer overheating, thermal comfort optimization, environmental impact on an Italian case study

The aim of the study is to verify the actual performance of a super-insulated wooden envelope in aresidential building located in a hot dry summer temperate climate and to optimize its thermal behaviorfavoring a dynamic interaction with the indoor environment.The method involved an integrated strategy between monitoring and calibrated simulations on exper-imental data and the simultaneous analysis of several aspects such as energy performance (EnergyPlussoftware), comfort (dynamic analysis with Fanger’s PMV comfort model) and environmental-economicsustainability (LCA analysis with SimaPro software). Parametric analyses were carried out to generalizethe results to various usage patterns of plants and passive cooling techniques and to several climatezones.The study highlighted the presence of overheating phenomena and demonstrated that this problemcan be solved or reduced through the adoption of appropriate passive strategies, such as massive innerlinings combined with natural or hybrid ventilation.Appropriate values of internal areal heat capacity and decrement factor will configure comfortable andenergy efficient solutions.In temperate climates the optimal solution, namely the adoption of a 12 cm thick solid brick (or dou-ble dry clay panel) and natural ventilation, reduces the discomfort levels of 30–50%. In hottest periodsof extreme climates the best solution, namely CMV + free-cooling combined with internal lightweightplaster, only slightly reduces the overheating with a 6% reduction of discomfort

Energy, comfort and environmental assessment of different building envelope techniques in a Mediterranean climate with a hot dry summer

The EU regulations on energy saving have been implemented in Italy with the adoption of the North-European super-insulated model that led to the construction of buildings not much related to their climatic context. The European Directives 2010/31/EU and 2012/27/EU highlighted the importance to consider the specific climate but the development of a technical culture suitable for a temperate climate stillremains an open question. The aim of the paper is to quantify the effect on energy consumptions, comfort levels, environmental sustainability of the adoption of 3 energy efficient envelopes recently introduced in Mediterranean area and characterized by different thermal inertia (masonry, wood–cement, wood). In order to achieve this goal, a multidisciplinary approach was adopted involving: the study of the energy performance in winter and summer using analytical models both in semi-stationary and dynamic conditions (Termo and EnergyPlus programs) and the detailed analysis of thermal bridges (Therm software); the analysis of the annual comfort through dynamic analysis with Fanger’s PMV and adaptive comfort models; the quantification of environmental–economic impacts through LCA analysis (SimaPro software) with Eco-indicator 99, CED, EPS 2000 and IPCC 2001 GWP methods and LCC considering financial and environmental costs. The results made it possible to stress the differences between the various adopted methods and demonstrate that in such energy efficient envelopes the thermal mass has low influence on energy saving while it has a great effect on comfort levels and environmental burdens, with a conflicting incidence on these two aspects

The effect of high thermal insulation on high thermal mass: Is the dynamic behaviour of traditional envelopes in Mediterranean climates still possible?

The paper aims at studying the effect of both high thermal insulation and high thermal mass techniques in buildings dynamic behaviour in Mediterranean climates. The two techniques can lead to conflicting requirements when considering winter and summer conditions, or even high daily temperature ranges. Therefore, the best solution for the summer can be the worst solution for the winter. It is necessary to identify insulation measures that conserve the mass dynamic behaviour. Experimental investigations were carried out on a single-family house to characterize the behaviour of two walls with different thermal inertia. Thermal simulations made it possible to explore different retrofit configurations also including dynamic strategies. The solutions were compared on comfort, energy savings and global cost. The study shows that the most suitable intervention is the maximization of the internal heat capacity and the introduction of an external insulation layer sealed in wintertime and ventilated in summer, thus maintaining the existing massive envelope seasonal dynamic behaviour by alternatively maximising thermal barrier effect and heat loss. Considering this, the authors introduced a recently patented dynamic system that reduces both summer discomfort levels and consumption, respectively, of about 20% and 43% respect to the worst retrofit solution