With a strong commitment to sustainability, numerous universities set their carbon reduction targets, with the common measure being energy retrofitting of their campus buildings. Based on a complex understanding of the higher educational buildings’ energy consumption characteristics, this study addresses the role of the academic calendar that regulates the occupancy condition of campus buildings and

Thermal bridges tend to increase overall buildings energy demand and might cause water condensation problems. They are thermally characterized by a linear transmission coefficient ψ or a point transmission coefficient χ. Today, most studies of thermal bridges are based on theoretical or numerical calculations. Standardized methods define default values and assumptions to make in simple or detailed

Among water-based mitigation strategies against urban overheating, dry mist systems are especially promising, given their local impact, cost-effectiveness and controllability. Intense cooling capacity has been reported under a variety of climates, however, there is a growing need to define specific design guidelines towards an informed and optimized use of the technology. Parametric analysis on validated

Predicting the electricity consumption of proposed new supermarkets is helpful to design and plan future energy management. Instead of creating complex site-specific thermal engineering models, data-driven energy prediction models can be useful to energy managers. We have designed and implemented a data-driven method to predict the future ’electricity daily load profile’ (EDLP) of new supermarkets

In this study, a PVT based solar assisted ground source heat pump (SAGSHP) system was investigated regarding its energy performance and cost-effectiveness for the city of Thessaloniki (Greece). The SAGSHP system was set to cover the space heating and domestic hot water needs for a low-rise dwelling. A system’s mathematic model formulated in TRNSYS was used with the aim to carry out parametric analysis

China has a vast territory with a variety of climates. Residents living in different climate zones are exposed to different indoor thermal environments in their homes and thus may have various thermal comfort levels. This study conducted a one-year campaign in 157 residential apartments in 12 cities across five climate zones in China by means of indoor thermal environment monitoring and online questionnaires

To meet demands of smart heating development, the novel dynamic regulation methods of heating systems need to be pursued. This paper presents a model predictive control (MPC) approach for room temperature regulation in multi-zone buildings. Among them, a) For heating systems with nonlinearity and large time delay, a hybrid optimization algorithm consisting of the improved particle swarm optimization

Urban heat islands are evident throughout the world and have been characterized using land-based measurements and remote sensing. Much of the existing research has focused on cities in predominantly hot climates but there is also evidence of urban heat islands being significant within heating-dominated climates. As climate change leads to increased temperatures, the urban heat island in temperate climates

Thermostats control the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system of a building based on the temperature they measure. Integration with communication network technologies allows wireless sensors to be used as the temperature sensing component of an HVAC system, increasing the flexibility in the selection and positioning of sensors. This study compared the temperature measuring performance

Ventilation and air distribution methods play an important role in indoor air quality and thermal environments. Effective airflow distribution within indoor environments has always been a great cause of concern. Attachment ventilation has drawn considerable interest since it is more energy efficient and space saving than traditional mixing or displacement ventilation methods. As a newly developed and

The purpose of this study was to analyze energy performance along with the effect on the improvement in the indoor environment and air quality through the empirical case of the Full Energy Efficiency Retrofit (EER) in Korea. To increase the improvement effect objectivity, changes before/after the Full EER were measured and compared through various special equipment. The Full EER implementation through

Increasing population and urbanisation threaten sustainable urban development due to increased resource consumption and emissions. As buildings are one of the largest energy consumers, it is crucial that their thermal load can be inspected on a large scale and at the highest resolution possible. The proposed method is performed in two stages. First, the LiDAR data and buildings’ metadata are preprocessed

The building envelope is a key factor affecting the energy efficiency of buildings. Often, building envelope design requires both explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. In practice, the tacit knowledge embedded in existing envelope design cases is significantly underused. To enhance the application of such knowledge, this paper proposes a case-based reasoning (CBR) model for the decision support of

Quantifying small scale domestic solar (PV) generation from energy consumption is becoming increasingly important as the install base of small solar (PV) panels rapidly grows. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the only insight into the consumption and generation of energy within a house comes from smart-meter readings. The smart meter records the amount of energy the house takes from the grid

Desiccant coated heat exchanger (DCHE), which can be adopted to construct a solar cooling system or desiccant heat pump system, can realize both sensible and latent load removal to provide comfortable supply air. Although it is difficult to avoid condensation in a practical application, the condensation condition of DCHEs is rarely studied. In this paper, a series of condensation experiments are carried

In accordance with the developing economy and growing population, an increasing number of tall buildings have been constructed over the last 20 years. In 2017, there were 144 new buildings worldwide that were 200 m or greater in height; 50% of these buildings were in China. Due to the vertical gradient impact of meteorological parameters, the energy performance of tall buildings differs from that of

Behavioral strategies of occupant energy conservation are essential to counter the effect of growing energy demand. The wide application of occupant energy interventions, such as providing subsidies to promote energy saving, involves continuous financial investments, which has been a particular challenge to subsidy providers, i.e. national energy agencies. Exploring the cost-effective interventions

In order to develop a more accurate photovoltaic–thermal collector and ground source heat pump integrated simulation model, it is necessary to consider the operation condition assumed in real situations, such as partial load of system, energy use situation, or energy production condition. Furthermore, the integrated simulation model should be verified by measurement data based on real-scale experiment

The airport terminal is a multi-region public transport building with special functions and the cooling load is a basic parameter determining the air-conditioning system for this special building. The large uncertainty in the parameters of the terminal cooling load calculation will affect the input data, which will lead to the uncertainty of the model results. In this paper, the load of a typical hub

Ice and swimming halls annually consume lots of energy and produce significant amount of potential waste heat in Finland. In this paper, utilization of four possible waste heat sources (ice refrigeration, dehumidification of air, Gray water and exhaust air) is studied by simulating combined energy system of ice and swimming halls locating in Helsinki. Four cases were simulated including the reference

The optimal control of the HVAC system in the nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs) can be considered as a challenge. Indeed, the lack of data given by monitored data does not allow understanding what are the implications of different strategies on thermal comfort and energy consumptions. This paper determines an approach for the evaluation of the management of the heating system in an existing educational

Although computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been widely adopted to improve data center thermal management, the high computational demand limits its applications, such as multivariate optimal design and operation. Fast fluid dynamics (FFD), which has been applied for fast airflow simulation, shows great potential. However, few research applied FFD for optimal design and operation of data center

Energy-saving potential in lighting is significant in office buildings due to their primary occupancy during the daytime. This potential can be realised with an advanced daylighting system being particularly able to deliver more uniform and steadier illumination. This paper presents prototyping and experimental validation of an automated louver with parametrically-angled reflective slats, in order

Building energy optimisation is generally performed under present climate conditions with fixed simulation parameters (e.g. internal loads). However, climate change and variations in simulation parameters over the building’s life span may impact the optimised design. A key question is whether a particular energy-optimised design under present climate conditions would remain energy-optimised in the

Climate change mitigation is a recurrent consciousness topic among society and policymakers. Actions are being adopted to face this crucial environmental challenge, with a rising concern with a big impact on the building sector. Construction materials have a high carbon footprint as well as an energy-intensive activity. To measure the environmental damage and effects, life cycle assessment (LCA) is

The rapid growth of urbanization has caused the intertwined relationship between the man-made system and the Earth development more dynamical and complicated. As the main link connecting the urban and environment, fuel energy has always been one of the hop-spots in recent scientific research. This paper proposed a novel method to estimate the mass of fuel load from urban area. The model comprehensively

Buildings consume a huge amount of energy, resulting in a considerable impact on the environment. In Canada, almost 70% of the total energy used by the commercial and institutional sectors was consumed by Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems, which makes them the main targets of energy performance optimization methods. Furthermore, based on a governmental report, 40%

The thermal adaptation of buildings and their residents is important in extreme cold climates for energy-saving building design. A thermal measurement and a thermal comfort survey were conducted in traditional houses during the winter in the extreme cold climate of the Himalayan region of Nepal. Measurements were taken in 9 houses over 7 days to assess the thermal environment. Thermal comfort surveys

With the development of advanced information techniques, smart energy meters have made a considerable amount of real-time electricity consumption data available. These data provide a promising way to understand energy usage patterns and improve building energy management. However, previous studies have paid more attention to methodologies for the identification of energy usage patterns and are limited

The average global cooling demand in non-residential buildings is expected to increase by over 275% between now and 2050. Controlled passive cooling is fundamental to successful operational performance of buildings and in mitigating of energy that would be consumed by mechanical systems. The aim of this study was to determine the resilience of different passive cooling control strategies in delivering

The European Union has identified buildings as the most promising targets for improving energy efficiency and has quantified a significant energy saving potential associated with the refurbishment of a building’s envelope and the installation of new technologies. The key objective of monitoring and modelling energy profiles in buildings is to provide the necessary background on energy consumption and

This paper presents a rural exemplar house built in San Francisco de Raymina (a high Andean village 3700 masl) in southern Peru that integrates passive and sustainable solar heating techniques. A climatic analysis of this village was carried out using measurements of meteorological parameters recorded throughout a whole year. The annually averaged temperature, relative humidity and horizontal daily

This paper provides a state-of-the-art and freely available online overview of the district heating (DH) efficiency of Danish building typologies. The overview is based on DH consumption data from 42 969 buildings constructed up until 2017 that in combination with data from the Danish Building and Dwelling Register constitutes a dataset with a previously unseen level of detail, confidence, sample size

This paper presents a systematic evaluation of the impact of the built urban context on the cooling energy performance of buildings subjected to extreme hot weather conditions. The proposed approach combines building energy modeling with an extensive parametric variation and statistical analysis scheme. It provides a direct quantification of inter-building shading on energy performance, with an emphasis

Ventilative cooling technologies have the potential to be an effective measure to reduce buildings energy consumption, by meeting some or all of the cooling requirement of a building without the need for mechanical cooling. Mixed-Mode (MM) buildings utilise both natural and mechanical cooling systems to meet their thermal energy demand. These buildings are able to guarantee that thermal comfort conditions

Short-term building energy usage prediction plays an important role in fields of building energy management, power plants dispatch, and peak demand conflicting with grid security. A large number of data-driven models were applied to building and larger scale energy consumption prediction in the past two decades. Although successes have been achieved by these models for specific cases, no single model

Time-frequency analysis that disaggregates a signal in both time and frequency domain is an important supporting technique for building energy analysis such as noise cancellation in data-driven building load forecasting. There is a gap in the literature related to comparing various time-frequency-analysis techniques, especially discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD)

Adding an energy accumulator to an air source heat pump (ASHP) unit can significantly improve its defrosting performances. However, the added energy accumulator may impact the system performances during heating period, which was rarely investigated in the published studies, especially for multi-split ASHP units (a kind of more and more widely used ASHP unit). In this paper, a comparative study on system

Naturally ventilated buildings' performance relies on their design and climatic conditions. Thus, when investigating the natural ventilation potential (NVP), the meteorological data plays a crucial role. This study discusses NVP assessment under two approaches: a general evaluation, using only meteorological data; and a specific investigation through building simulation. Both analyses included in-situ

Building energy simulation (BES) tools are key instruments for sizing the PCM based system in the built environment and analyzing its effect on thermal comfort and energy demand. Due to complex solidification and melting phenomena of PCM, BES tools have limitations in predicting its performance with buildings. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools are also used to model the PCM, but those models

Space and water heating contribute 62% and 21% of the residential greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in Canada, respectively, which corresponds to 11% of the GHGs within the country. Because both space and water heating are dominated by natural gas, the carbon footprint of Canada could be significantly reduced with a shift towards clean space and water heating, such as heat pump water heaters (HPWHs)

The use of thermoelectricity in buildings represents a disruptive alternative for indoor thermal needs as it is a technology that allows the elimination of refrigerants. In this line of research, authors of this study have worked on the design and construction of several Ventilated Active Thermoelectric Envelope (VATE) prototypes. A VATE is an industrial-scale modular prototype designed to be installed

The Predicted Mean Vote and Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PMV/PPD) method is used worldwide to assess thermal comfort. The PMV/PPD method traditionally depends on four environmental parameters; air temperature, relative humidity, mean radiant temperature and air velocity, and two personal parameters; metabolic rate and clothing insulation. However, accurate modelling of thermal comfort requires

General circulation models (GCM) have been used by researchers to assess the effect of climate change in different fields of study. In the case of building energy performance, GCMs can be used to evaluate future building energy performance through simulations. However, a key issue with the use of GCM data in building energy simulation is the inadequate resolution and bias of the data. Therefore, in

The time-varying feature of heating loads of public buildings creates a considerable space for exploring control strategies of matching the balance between the supply and demand side of district heating system (DHS). However, the strong coupling relationship between hydraulic conditions of each building has brought great difficulties for the operation regulation of DHS. Therefore, an operation strategy

In this paper the findings from a long-term field study of the thermal performance of a circa 1950s dwelling are presented and discussed. The study aimed at evaluating the robustness of the QUB method in the field under UK climatic conditions. A series of 147 QUB tests were performed during the whole heating period (September 2016 – March 2017) in a detached house located in the University Park campus