Both global and local heating phenomena can potentially influence the building thermal performance and comfort. The residential construction sector had a real estate “boom” in the beginning of the 2000’s in Sao Paulo and there is no available information on how this recent built stock performs under the current climate and how it will do, considering the warming climate. Therefore, this study addresses

In recent years, radiant floor heating systems have been favored by more and more consumers because of their better comfort, high stability, and energy efficiency. This is especially true in southern China, where heating demand is increasing, and its application is becoming more common. This study explored the method of establishing a state-space model of a variable-flow radiant heating system without

Delaying the analysis of the building performance to the final stages of the design process can often cause the actual results to differ from the expected ones, with the issue of significant redesign costs. The aim of this work is to improve the designer’s control on thermal and geometric variables of the building in the first stages of the design process, to obtain an optimized building from different

The heat-source tower heat pump, a frost-free heat pump with superior energy efficiency, has been used for heating in cold regions. Because the solution in the heat-source tower absorbs moisture continuously from the outdoor air and becomes diluted during heating, solution regeneration is necessary. However, existing regeneration technologies have various disadvantages, such as a reduced heating capacity

System operations and planning are crucial aspects of power system management. They aim to maintain the equilibrium of electricity supply and demand while ensuring reliable and secure power system operation. Consumers have to pay more for electricity during periods of high peak demand in various sectors. If consumers have knowledge about expected peak load ahead of time, such extra charges could potentially

Compared with traditional photovoltaic (PV) cells, bifacial PV cells can generate electricity on both sides. The study aims to research the electricity generation improvement of bifacial PV module as building envelope, and to find factors affecting its power generation performance in order to optimize it. A prefabricated building was renovated with two facades and the roof installed with bifacial PV

For a residential district heating or cooling (RDHC) system in the “part-time part-space (PTPS)” service mode, the thermal load demands of end users are notably stochastic. To reducing the energy consumption of centralized variable-speed pumps (VSPs) in RDHC systems, this study presents a stochastic load demand-oriented synergetic optimal control strategy for VSPs in RDHC systems. In this strategy

This paper presents the development of a novel optimization model for optimizing the use of RE measures in existing buildings to satisfy an owner-specified target reduction in energy consumption while minimizing the required building upgrade costs. The model performance was evaluated using a real-life case study of an educational building with a total area of 20,717 m2. The optimization model was used

Among panel systems, underfloor heating is mostly used in Serbia because it offers special benefits in terms of thermal comfort and final energy consumption.Uniform temperature distribution at room height, operation in lower temperature regimes, a fairly simple method of installation and mounting, long service life, simple temperature control by zones and currently low price of electricity in Serbia

This paper introduces a physically-based model to simulate interactions between a building and its outdoor conditions at the urban microscale. In the model, the building is simulated with EnergyPlus while its outdoor conditions are assessed from OpenFOAM. Furthermore, the model simulates the street pavement and surrounding buildings based on the lumped thermal theory. All components of the model are

This paper investigates the application of surrogate modelling to create bottom-up archetype models, to improve the energy performance of specific residential building archetypes. The objective of this study is to quantify the application range(s) of surrogate models to predict and improve the annual energy performance of single-family home archetypes. Six distinct surrogate models were developed using

Smart thermostats are one of the most prevalent home automation products. Despite the importance of having an accurate thermal model for the operation of smart thermostats, reliable identification of this model is still an open problem. In this paper, we explore various techniques for establishing a suitable thermal model using time series data generated by smart thermostats. We show that Bayesian

This paper describes a new tool developed for the detection of operating faults in ventilation units with heat recovery. In principle, the tool is based on the APAR (Air Handling Unit Performance Assessment Rules) method. By following the semantic data description in accordance with the BrickSchema and Project Haystack initiatives, the tool is portable. The executive part of the fault detection system

Current building pressurization test methods considerably reduce the scope of validity of the test results when stack effect is significant without clear justification. This work attempts to fill this gap based on physical modelling and numerical simulations. In steady and no-wind conditions, it gives the error in the test result with leaks discretely distributed over the building height assuming the

A considerable amount of the oil used in Saudi Arabia is consumed to generate power. In an effort to minimize such consumption, the government of Saudi Arabia has established an ambitious part of the 2030 Vision that includes 96 strategic objectives. In recent years, the advancement in information technology has made it possible to develop accurate prediction models of energy consumption for constructed

Several studies have analyzed the heat flow impact of green roofs in hot weather, but few studies have examined the thermal performance during cold climate conditions. This study presents an experimental and numerical investigation of a large extensive green roof on the Onondaga County Convention Center in Syracuse, NY in both summer and winter conditions. Measured temperatures across the multilayers

The need to accelerate energy retrofitting and integrate renewable energies in the built environment sector has been recognized by the European Union and its member states, with many policies and directives already in place. However, compared with single building retrofitting, there are no established approaches for energy retrofitting at district and urban scales, in part due to the complexity of

Energy efficiency remains a significant topic in the control of building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, and diverse set of control strategies have been developed to optimize performance, including recently emerging techniques of deep reinforcement learning (DRL). While most existing works have focused on minimizing energy consumption, the generalization to energy cost minimization

During the last few years, multi-objective optimization processes have become one of the main challenges for energy efficiency in buildings. In this work, a new efficient multi-objective optimization method, based on the Building Performance Optimization (BPO) technique, has been developed to improve the indoor thermal comfort and energy performance of residential buildings, i.e. a Moroccan ground

Smart home technologies are becoming prevalent in residential buildings. Despite interface and control improvements offered by smart thermostats, previous work has found energy savings from this technology to be variable. Further, little is known about how smart thermostat operation differs from conventional programmable thermostat operation, which has been studied extensively. In this paper, data

The residential PV-battery system is becoming economically viable due to technological advances. Selecting optimum investment portfolios and operation strategies are still the challenges faced by homeowners. This study proposed an integrated stochastic sizing-operating framework for optimal design and operation of grid-connected residential photovoltaic (PV)-battery systems. The two-stage stochastic

Active-passive phase change heat storage technologies have been obtained extensive application to decrease greenhouse’s demands for fossil energy during off-seasons. To develop the utilization ratio of solar energy in solar greenhouses during winter, the active-passive ventilation wall with latent heat storage (APVW-L) was introduced and could be integrated into greenhouse’s back-wall. However, system

This paper presents one of the largest wintertime indoor temperature surveys of English social housing dwellings. Half hourly temperatures were measured in living rooms and main bedrooms of 124 social housing dwellings located in central England. Indoor temperatures were analysed for two distinct periods of “heating season” and “winter” during the assumed occupied hours of 08:00-20:00 for living rooms

Grouping techniques are frequently used in urban studies as a means for partitioning building stock heterogeneity. The choice of grouping techniques and selection indices can have a significant influence on the segmentation of building stock and associated identification of representative buildings. To date, this issue has not been systematically examined nor justified. The current paper compares different

The structural components of load-bearing concrete frame buildings, such as concrete beams and columns, are critical elements of the facades which often act as a thermal bridge. To reduce the impact of structural thermal bridge areas in non-retrofitted Portuguese residential buildings, a new innovative solar passive retrofit solution, named Solar Bridge Retrofit System (SBRS), is proposed. This concept

Physics-based energy simulation methods are widely used for the prediction of building energy consumption and daylighting in commercial buildings. Such simulations are performed to evaluate the design of new buildings or to predict the benefits of various retrofits to the building’s performance. However, there are uncertainties in the results from such simulations, with higher uncertainty if the model

The energy performance of residential buildings significantly depends on the building occupants’ behavior, which can be highly variable. When the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system is controlled based on the presence or absence of occupants in a building, occupant behavior is of even further importance to its energy performance. In current practice, building energy simulation tools

The diffuse radiation on building envelopes can be essential to the thermal environment and the energy study of buildings. Because a part of the skydome can be obstructed irregularly in city environments, the diffuse radiance distribution over the skydome should be determined to evaluate the radiation accurately. In this study, this distribution is described by several representative sky directions