Performing multi-objective optimization for actual public building design has become one of the most challenging subjects in buildings energy efficiency area. Gymnasium is a large energy consumer in public buildings. This study efforts to put forward a novel approach to tackle multi-objective optimization problems for building performance of Qingdao University (QUT) Gymnasium using a new metamodel

This paper explores whether the policy of mitigating climate change through energy-efficient retrofitting supports more balanced development or increases regional disparities. The issue is explored through the estimation of the socioeconomic effects of energy-efficient renovation across Croatian regions. The regional input–output model is applied to identify direct, indirect, and induced effects of

Cascade multi-functional heat pumps are becoming popular due to their ability to simultaneously provide cooling, heating, and hot water. In this study, the performance characteristics of a water-to-water cascade multi-functional heat pump designed to provide heating, hot water, and simultaneous heating and hot water during the winter season are analyzed according to variation in secondary fluid temperature

In view of advancing global warming, climate change adaptation and mitigation measures for buildings are becoming increasingly important. The following article discusses the question of whether current urban planning principles still provide a suitable framework for this purpose. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify and quantify the main parameters of the urban planning framework regarding

Building integrated photovoltaics is an envelope solution that combines energy generation, net energy demand reduction, and aesthetics. Lighter and semi-transparent technologies made the integration of photovoltaic cells in windows possible, which could not be achieved with traditional silicon technologies. This article aims to propose a new method to measure building energy performance using parametric

In the Chinese district heating network, unheated users generally exist in multi-family residential buildings, which adversely affects the heating performance of the whole building and its surrounding users. These effects are directly related to the fairness of heat metering and the rationality of system adjustment. Aiming to study this effect, a model of a multi-family residential heating system that

Energy consumption prediction for buildings and architectural complexes has become increasingly important. However, existing methods based on simulation software or statistical algorithms have distinct disadvantages. Consequently, this study introduces a novel prediction method based on models between occupant behavior and energy consumption. A new parameter––the occupant behavior characteristic parameter

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems help maintain the appropriate level of thermal comfort and air quality in buildings. To this end, the energy supply of these systems must be guaranteed. However, continuous efforts are required to improve the energy efficiency of this system and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the zero-emission building approach, the use of thermoelectric devices

Network hydraulics play a major role in the design and operation stage of the District Heating (DH) systems, considering further hydraulic complexities expected in the near future. This paper presents a mathematical solution procedure that computes the network hydraulics, tailored as unique to the principal basis behind the branched type of DH networks. The procedure makes use of simple input data

In comparison to conventional thermal insulators, superinsulation materials (SIMs), such as silica aerogel or vacuum insulation panels, provide a similar insulation performance at half to a quarter of the material thickness but this superior thermal insulation performance typically comes at a significantly higher material cost. However, under certain conditions, the use of superinsulation materials

The input setting of an air conditioner (AC) usage schedule has a significant influence on the results of the bottom-up simulation model of household AC energy use. To set more accurate inputs when estimating the AC energy consumption based on the bottom-up simulation model, it is essential to establish a prediction model for the AC on/off state. However, due to the limitation of the data collection

Today, about 35% of global energy consumption and related carbon dioxide emissions are caused by the construction sector. This paper evaluates and compares the life cycle energy consumption (LCEC) and carbon dioxide emissions (LCCE) of a heritage building (BT1) constructed in 1875, a new building (BT2) constructed with modern constructional elements with similar plans of the heritage building and the

In this paper, we describe patterns of residential heating based on data from 255 homes in and around Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, spanning August 2016 to June 2018. We describe: (i) the room temperatures achieved, (ii) the diurnal durations of heating use, and (iii) common diurnal patterns of heating behaviour. We investigate how these factors vary between weekdays and weekends, over the course of the

Building retrofits have great potential to reduce CO2 emissions since buildings are responsible for 36% of emissions in the United States. Several existing studies have examined the effect of building retrofit measures on CO2 emission reduction. However, these studies oversimplified emission factors of electricity by adopting constant annual emission factors. This study uses hourly emission factors

Household energy transition is beneficial to the environment and public health. However, the subjective welfare of the participants is not guaranteed to be improved. This paper takes China’s clean heating program as an example of household energy transition and investigates the factors that affect participants’ satisfaction with the program. Based on a large-scale household survey in Beijing, we find

The effect of nudging on the usage of an energy-consuming device associated with human indoor thermal comfort is investigated together with the corresponding effect on occupant subjective thermal comfort. Thirty-six subjects participated in an experiment conducted in an environmental room controlled to maintain a stable warm condition (operative temperature: 29.5 °C; corresponding PMV: 1.44). Each

All over the world, “Construction” is an important sector that consumes a significant amount of resources and produces a lot of waste. Buildings as a whole share nearly one-fourth of total electricity generation in tropical countries that results in adverse effects on the natural environment and their national economies. Enhancing the building energy efficiencies relies on material and technology selection

In this paper, sensor calibration method using data-driven prediction models are developed to eliminate sensor error in the variable air volume (VAV) system. Indoor sensible loads and indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, which are the main factors necessary for sensor operation in a VAV system, were predicted using a data-driven model (artificial neural network). Using this prediction model

Pressure control for cleanrooms in the pharmaceutical industry is a necessary means to avoid the cross-contamination. The pressure control of traditional air conditioning can only handle the working stage. In the non-working stage, the system cannot reduce the air change rate per hour (ACH) in order to alleviate the problem of high energy consumption. This paper proposes an improved air conditioning

A method for risk analysis and building performance simulations is developed to optimise the building design process and fulfil the design criteria. The aim is to support the decision-makers during the building design process by including uncertainties from the design phase, quantifying the probability of attaining the energy performance criteria and financial requirements. The method is meant to be

Reducing the emissions in the building sector requires reasonable renovation and integration of renewable energy sources to find the optimal trade-off between ecological benefit and economic effort. However, many buildings, different types of usage, needs of residents, and transient weather conditions contribute to a vast number of use cases, making the search for the optimal trade-off challenging

Nursing homes are designed and operated to meet general thermal specifications outlined by existing standards. This paper presents adaptive thermal comfort models for nursing homes based on the field survey administered in 100 common rooms of five nursing homes in the Mediterranean climate. The survey included simultaneous measurements of outdoor and indoor environmental parameters and an assessment

The energy required for space heating has been significantly reduced in recent decades due to more efficient insulation and building technology. However, studies show deviations between actual and predicted heat consumptions. Apart from mere technical aspects, occupant behaviour is recognized as one of the major causes for the observed mismatch. The more efficient the building, the more the ventilation

Because several buildings constructed in the process of urbanization are aged, several countries in the EU have been aware of the problems in terms of the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of these existing buildings. To address these problems, various studies have been conducted to determine an improvement method for the energy performance of aged buildings by adopting the smart city

Energy pile technology is a popular means of heating and cooling buildings and has high potential applicability. However, energy pile design does not currently consider the thermo-mechanical interactions between the energy pile and surrounding soil appropriately due to a lack of understanding of behavior around the soil pile interface, which has seen little in-situ testing. In this study, a 74 day

Obtaining accurate models for heating and building systems is crucial for prediction and control in the context of energy effciency and demand response. Models should be both computationally and data-effcient, as well as easy to implement. This paper therefore introduces a methodology for data-driven modeling and control of residential heating systems and buildings. Dynamic mode decomposition is used

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed interest in assessing how the operation of HVAC systems influences the risk of airborne disease transmission in buildings. Various processes, such as ventilation and filtration, have been shown to reduce the probability of disease spread by removing or deactivating exhaled aerosols that potentially contain infectious material. However, such qualitative recommendations

Short-term building energy consumption prediction is of great significance to the optimal operation of building energy systems and conservation. Machine-learning models are widely used due to their high prediction accuracy and efficiency in dealing with high-dimensional nonlinear problems. To compare the performance of different machine-learning models in building energy consumption prediction, this

The large-scale use of home appliances based on Switch Mode Power Supplies (SMPSs) raises the interest in power quality problems they might cause. Accurate modeling of SMPS-based loads allows predicting the collective impact caused on low voltage networks. However, model parameter values for a specific load are not often available. This paper proposes a nonintrusive Optimal Parameter Estimation (OPE)

To more accurately evaluate the indoor hygrothermal environment of a building, control the indoor temperature and humidity, evaluate the thermal comfort of occupants, and select the capacity of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, moisture transfer from and into architectural materials should be considered. However, the most widely used commercialized software ignores the moisture

The fact that the popular head loss coefficient concept, may become negative in branched junctions, is a symptom that something is not correctly managed. The paper makes a review of recent works which have sought new models based on physical concepts, as a way to avoid speaking about ”negative losses”. Herwing and Schmandt [1], showed that the origin of the negative sign was a diffusive shear work

Due to insufficient records and limited number of weather stations, prediction models must be used to forecast local climate conditions. Accurate prediction is required in the case of emerging cities because rapid growth in urban development causes changes in the attributes of the urban environment, particularly the local microclimate. With the help of the Urban Weather Generator (UWG) and a locally

To date, the assessment of the energy flexibility to be delivered by existing buildings and by their legacy HVAC systems is hindered by a lack of commonly agreed-upon methodologies. There are many research works in the field; however, many of them are focused on the design stage or, in case of addressing building operation, they are based on controlled experimental set-ups. The novelty of this paper

In-situ U-value monitoring of building envelopes are investigated in this article by reviewing past studies and monitoring the performance of highly insulated building envelopes. Specific past research studies have concluded both over- and underperformance of the building fabric when measured in situ. This current research has found that when analysing all studies and results over the full range of

To reduce energy consumption, governments have introduced public-private partnerships in energy-efficient retrofits (PPP-EER) of existing public buildings. However, this initiative has received a mixed response from private investors. Government investment subsidies effectively attract private investors, but the current literature does not specify how to choose an appropriate subsidy strategy. To address

Behavior energy conservation in buildings greatly impacts energy conservation and carbon reductions at the national level, and part-time space heating has become an important part of building operation. Under these conditions, heating terminals with different properties differ significantly in their heat consumption and heat grade demands. However, a comprehensive evaluation of the transference of

The development of energy-saving technologies for buildings is an important means of achieving carbon neutrality. The respiration-type double-layer glass curtain wall (RDGCW) is a kind of enclosure structure with natural air circulation and a shading function. The RDGCW provides energy saving, and it is being widely promoted and used in China. However, there is still a lack of relevant research on

In Europe, the energy performance of dwellings is measured using theoretical building energy models based on the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), which estimates the energy consumption of dwellings. However, literature shows large performance gaps between the theoretically predicted energy consumption and the actual energy consumption of dwellings. The goal of this paper is to investigate

Faults in air handling units (AHUs) in commercial buildings often waste energy and/or cause discomfort. Intermediate AHU sensors are dedicated merely for diagnostics and are essential to isolate faults rather than for controls; However, in many AHUs, such sensors are either missing, misplaced, or uncalibrated. This paper investigates three model-based methods to make up for the lack of reliable intermediate

Many existing optimal solar-based hot water system design methods do not quantitatively consider the impact of energy mismatching, which leads to the overestimation of system performance and misleads the optimal design of the system. For addressing such mismatching problems, a solar-based hot water system optimization design method based on real-time energy balancing and co-adaptive matchmaking is

Load forecasting is an expected ability of electric power networks to enable effective capacity planning. This paper proposes a probabilistic approach to short-term load forecasting (STLF) of residential power consumption. The proposed method is based on Bayesian regression modeling. It utilizes an additive Gaussian Process (GP) to estimate climate-sensitive and calendar factors of power demand. The

Residential central heating (RCH) is an important part of residents’ well-being policy. However, it is accompanied by extensive energy consumption and carbon emissions. To identify and design efficient future clean heating strategies, we quantified the carbon emissions from RCH in China from 2000 to 2017. Notably, our study is the first to analyze the driving factors of RCH carbon emissions using decomposition

Year-round high temperatures and humidity in the Tropics, coupled with poor design decisions and climate change, can cause indoor environments to overheat, affecting health and increasing energy demand and carbon emissions. Passive cooling could help lower the indoor overheating risk. Given the gap in the relative influence of passive cooling design strategies on lowering the indoor overheating risk

ASHRAE Guideline 36: High-performance sequences of operation (SOO) for Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning (HVAC) Systems has been demonstrated to save 17%-30% energy under ideal simulation environments. However, HVAC systems are susceptible to various types of faults in a real building operation. There are no existing studies that pertain to a comprehensive fault impact analysis of the high-performance

Nearly zero energy building is a promising solution for tackling the conflict between the reducing fossil fuel reserves and the ever-increasing energy demand. Initiatives and goals for nearly zero energy buildings have been announced in different countries, as well as a series of strategies and incentives for advocating renewable energy applications. Within this context, homeowners’ energy awareness

We present in this work a method to design lighting sources that can be adapted to different temperatures of color and, simultaneously, with a tunable circadian character. We obtained an acceptable range of tuning in both parameters compared to the bibliography. This kind of lighting source has potential applications particularly in building lighting, but also in farming or agriculture. At the same