1,720,971 research outputs found
TIMEPAC – Guidelines to create archetypes of the building stock from EPC data
Full text linkAmong the objectives of the Directive, the national building renovation plan is mandatory. Building archetypes, which are representative of clusters within the building stock, can significantly contribute to the formulation of a national building renovation plan. These archetypes encapsulate the diverse characteristics of the building stock, thereby improving the accuracy of urban energy models while simultaneously reducing their complexity, as to engage multiple stakeholders.
The guidelines aim to provide a methodology to conduct a statistical analysis on the EPC database, as a core source of information to create the archetypes and analyse the energy performance status of the building stock. An important phase is dedicated to check the quality of the data provided by the certificates that is crucial to assure the validity of the outcomes
Assessing data uncertainty in large-scale energy model
No full textUnder the recently approved EPBD (EU 2024/1275), European countries have to develop national building renovation plans relying on Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM) and building archetypes.
This paper highlights the role of buildings archetypes by analysing the impact of key input parameters. Using a real case study from Aosta (Italy), composed by eighteen residential buildings segmented into three archetypes, this work assesses the influence of seven independent parameters through multiple linear regression. Results show that older buildings are most affected by wall thermal transmittance and heating set-point, while newer ones are mainly influenced by heating set-point and infiltration rate
Use of Energy Performance Certificates data repositories in Urban Building Energy Models
No full textThe development of building stock energy models still suffers from the lack of information about the existing building stocks. The article is focused on the creation of an Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) from accessible information sources, accompanied by input data from the Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). Guidelines addressed to future developers, regarding the establishment of an urban-scale energy model in case of data lacking, are provided. This methodological approach was applied to an urban block in Northern Italy. Once the virtual environment had been defined on the UMI software, the energy performance for space heating (EPH;nren) was assessed and compared to that derived from the EPCs. Despite different calculation methods are compared, an acceptable deviation (10%) occurs for the residential building units
From Building Energy Models (BEM) to Urban Building Energy Models (UBEM): input data and modelling approaches
No full textThe past 15 years have seen a strong development of advanced new Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM) tools that have been generated with existing (e.g., EnergyPlus) or new calculation engines. Due to the high computational time and the huge level of uncertainty in UBEMs, the introduction of some model simplifications and assumptions becomes unavoidable. The present contribution addresses the differences between Building Energy Model (BEM) and UBEM for the categories that characterise the input data and the calculation models. General considerations, independent of specific energy performance simulation programs, are made. The analysis of the theoretical differences between the two calculation models provides useful support both to beginners and expert UBEM developers. A preliminary analysis of the mutual energy interactions between buildings in UBEMs is performed. Specifically, shortwave and longwave radiation exchanges between a building and the urban context are analysed and discussed, by comparing a single-building energy model and an urban building energy model. The analysis has been applied to a real neighbourhood, composed of eleven apartment blocks, sited in the northwest of Italy (Turin)
Building Archetypes Supporting the National Building Renovation Plan
No full textThe national building renovation plan is a key element in the recently approved version of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The plan will provide a comprehensive overview of the energy and environmental performance of both the residential and non-residential building stock. To achieve the objective of mapping the energy status of urban configurations, the exploitation of building typologies, representative of different climatic zones, building use categories, and construction periods, has shown to be a useful approach.
The huge data uncertainty related to the building archetype generation necessitates a deeper analysis of the variation of crucial inputs that have repercussions on the energy performance assessment of the building stock.
This work begins with the Urban Building Energy Model data classification aimed at identifying the fundamental inputs needed to run an urban large-scale energy analysis. Then, the paper proceeds with the review and categorisation of the existing Italian databases, exploitable to mitigate the high uncertainty related to the input data. Once the requisite information is collected and the databases classified, the application part progresses with the probabilistic building archetype schema generation from the energy performance certificates of the Aosta Valley Region, taken as a case study. A local large-scale sensitivity analysis, obtained varying one at a time the thermophysical parameters of the building fabric and the window-to-wall ratio of a residential stock located in Aosta, was carried out. The study highlights how variations in statistical ranges of inputs, particularly regarding the performance of opaque building envelope components, impact the assessment of building energy needs
Advancing energy efficiency at the urban scale: perspectives on reliable information in the next-generation Energy Performance Certificates
Full text linkThe contribution highlights the role of next-generation EPCs as a key instrument for supporting data-driven urban energy planning. Exploiting data through innovative services can significantly enhance the energy and environmental performance assessment of the building stock. Key factors for success include data availability, accessibility, and quality. Within the H2020 TIMEPAC project, emphasis has been placed on enhancing the usability, reliability, and enrichment of Energy Performance Certificate data to effectively support urban-scale energy analysis
The Challenges for a Holistic, Flexible and Through-Life Updated Energy Performance Certificate
No full textOne of the strategies proposed by the revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) is to provide the Member States with more reliable, accurate, and digitalised Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), namely the so-called next-generation EPCs. The EU-Horizon2020 TIMEPAC project (Towards Innovative Methods for Energy Performance Assessment and Certification of Buildings) is aimed at enhancing the entire process to generate, store, analyse, and exploit EPCs. The starting point of the project is that the building is no longer conceived as a static entity, but as an occupant-centric object, subject to continuous changes. Therefore, the enhanced EPC approach should be holistic, flexible, through-life updatable (e.g., building renovations, internal conditions, aging, etc.), interoperable, and integrated.
The TIMEPAC approach includes a preliminary analysis of the current certification procedures in the six partner countries involved, as well as the proposal for an enhanced schema that meets the EPC requirements highlighted above. The enhanced EPC schema is currently under development through five different Transversal Deployment Scenarios, each one involving different stages of the EPC workflow (generation, storage, analysis, and exploitation), multiple stakeholders, and data sources. One of these scenarios will address the EPC scheme enhancement through operational data integration (building energy model calibration), as to reduce the "performance gap" between the actual building energy consumption and the standard performance provided by the EPC. Moreover, it will also evaluate the integration of a wider set of parameters in the EPC; these will consider different evaluation domains, such as indoor environmental quality, environmental sustainability, smart-readiness, and cost-effectiveness. Another scenario will, instead, provide a methodology to exploit the EPC database by carrying out reliable large-scale energy analysis to boost the deep renovation of the building stock. This is focused on the EPC data quality checking procedure based on a set of rules and scores to evaluate the reliability of the energy certificate data.
In this work, the main methodologies proposed in the TIMEPAC project for the enhancement of the existing EPC scheme are presented and discussed
Assessing the reliability of archetype-based Urban Building Energy Simulations: A case study analysis in Turin (Italy).
No full textThe recently issued Energy Performance of Building Directive (EU 2024/1275) emphasises the importance of national building renovation plans, achievable by integrating building archetypes with Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM). However, UBEMs are often uncalibrated or unvalidated, and building archetypes are typically derived from energy certificates, which are known to have quality limitations. This research aims to assess the representativeness and reliability of data within building archetypes through a validation procedure, enhancing model credibility. Specifically, the proposed methodology introduces two new KPIs - the Validity of Representativeness Hours (VRH) and the Percentage of Representativeness Hours (PRH) - to evaluate how closely simulated energy demand aligns with real-energy consumption data within a defined tolerance range, given a set of inputs derived from the probabilistic building archetype schema. This methodology was applied to a residential case study in the municipality of Turin (Italy), composed by more than 300 apartment blocks and modelled in CitySim Pro. The validation procedure successfully identifies the most representative building archetype data, shaping and capturing the real energy performance of the building stock
The challenges for a holistic, flexible and through-life updated energy performance certificate
Full text linkOne of the strategies proposed by the recently approved version of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive recast is to provide the Member States with more reliable, accurate, and digitalised Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), the so-called next-generation or enhanced EPCs. Currently, end-users perceive the EPC as just an administrative obligation for buying or renting a building. The data in the certificates provide limited energy-related information and lack accuracy. Moreover, they cannot account for the continuous changes that occur throughout building lifetime.
The overcoming of the EPC limitations is the main objective of the research activity conducted within the
framework of Next Generation EPC Horizon2020 cluster. At this regard, the EU-Horizon2020 TIMEPAC project is going to contribute to the enhancement of the entire process of generating, storing, analysing, and exploiting
EPCs. The premise is that the building is no longer conceived as a static entity, but as an occupant-centric object, subject to continuous changes. Therefore, the enhanced EPC approach should be holistic, flexible, through-life updatable, and interoperable.
In this work, the main methodologies and tools proposed in the TIMEPAC project for the enhancement of the
existing EPC schema in terms of EPC generation, exploitation, and data quality are presented and discussed
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