Energies

Research

18 pages, 2039 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving the Energy Efficiency, Limiting Costs and Reducing CO₂ Emissions of a Museum Using Geothermal Energy and Energy Management Policies

by Gianluca Cadelano, Francesco Cicolin, Giuseppe Emmi, Giulia Mezzasalma, Davide Poletto, Antonio Galgaro and Adriana Bernardi

Energies 2019, 12(16), 3192; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12163192 - 20 Aug 2019

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4351

Abstract

Museums are major energy consumers amongst buildings, especially if they are housed in historical constructions. Museums usually present high energy demand for the air-conditioning due to their architectonical and structural characteristics, such as the presence of large exhibition rooms and open spaces. At [...] Read more.

Museums are major energy consumers amongst buildings, especially if they are housed in historical constructions. Museums usually present high energy demand for the air-conditioning due to their architectonical and structural characteristics, such as the presence of large exhibition rooms and open spaces. At the same time, temperature and humidity have to be strictly controlled in order to assure proper microclimate conditions for the conservation of the housed collections and adequate thermal comfort for visitors and personnel. Moreover, despite being subjected to architectural protection that limits most structural refurbishment interventions, these buildings must be adequate from an energy point of view to allow their reuse or continuity of use according to current quality standards, while retaining their heritage significance. In this awkward context, ground source heat pump working with high temperature terminals is proposed as a viable refurbishment solution. The use of shallow geothermal systems can improve the energy efficiency of the heating ventilation air-conditioning systems and, at the same time, increases the renewable energy source exploitation without affecting the indoor environmental conditions. However, after the interventions, the expected benefits and the sought-after limitation of energy consumption/cost may not occur for different reasons. In fact, even if the installed solution is working perfectly and properly designed, every effort will be in vain if adequate attention is not paid to the management of the plants during the operational phase. This document is meant to evaluate and compare the magnitude that invasive (i.e., technical interventions) and not invasive (i.e., energy management policies) actions respectively and their combined interaction, have on a museum. Through energy simulations it has been possible to quantify the effects that different interventions and energy management strategies had on an existing museum housed in an historical building, from energy consumption, energy costs and CO₂ emission standpoints. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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18 pages, 4352 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thermal Assessment of a Novel Drywall System Insulated with VIPs

by Ioannis Atsonios, Ioannis Mandilaras and Maria Founti

Energies 2019, 12(12), 2373; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12122373 - 20 Jun 2019

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2587

Abstract

Advanced building envelopes targeting high energy performance should combine high thermal performance with easy and fast installation. The combination of lightweight steel-framed building systems with vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) form an attractive solution toward this requirement. In the present study, a lightweight metal [...] Read more.

Advanced building envelopes targeting high energy performance should combine high thermal performance with easy and fast installation. The combination of lightweight steel-framed building systems with vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) form an attractive solution toward this requirement. In the present study, a lightweight metal frame drywall building insulated with VIPs is constructed and experimentally/theoretically investigated, focusing on the impact of every type of thermal bridges on the thermal performance of the envelope and its upgrade due to the presence of the VIPs at the walls. Temperature measurements obtained at several locations of the envelope, over a period of one year, are presented and analyzed. The results are in agreement with the theoretical values and demonstrate that the VIPs can reduce the thermal transmittance of the central part of the wall by ca. 50%, limiting the impact of metal studs. The paper discusses the impact of dimensional inaccuracies and damaged panels on the thermal performance of the envelope. It is shown that VIP decreases the impact of thermal bridges and reduces the risk of condensation inside the walls. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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19 pages, 5017 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Energy Demand Forecast Models for Commercial Buildings in South Korea

by Sungkyun Ha, Sungho Tae and Rakhyun Kim

Energies 2019, 12(12), 2313; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12122313 - 17 Jun 2019

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4632

Abstract

With the Paris Agreement entering into full force, South Korea must submit its target greenhouse gas emissions for commercial buildings by 2030 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. To determine this target, the annual energy demands must be forecasted through [...] Read more.

With the Paris Agreement entering into full force, South Korea must submit its target greenhouse gas emissions for commercial buildings by 2030 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. To determine this target, the annual energy demands must be forecasted through appropriate models; the development of these models is the focus of our study. We developed a system to calculate energy demand forecasts by searching for suitable methods. We built distinct energy forecast models for petroleum, city gas, electricity, heat, and renewable energies. The results show that the most appropriate variable for the petroleum energy model is energy trend. Moreover, the annual increase rate of petroleum energy demand from 2019 to 2030 was forecasted to be −1.7%. The appropriate variable for city gas energy model was the floor area of commercial buildings, which was forecasted to increase at an annual average growth rate of 0.4% from 2019 to 2030. According to the forecast results of energy demand from 2019 to 2030, the annual average growth rates of electricity, heat, and renewable energy demands were 2.1%, −0.2%, and 1.3%, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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23 pages, 8796 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimal Operation of Building Microgrids with Rooftop Greenhouse Under Component Outages in Islanded Mode

by Se-Hyeok Choi, Akhtar Hussain and Hak-Man Kim

Energies 2019, 12(10), 1930; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12101930 - 20 May 2019

Viewed by 2440

Abstract

An optimal operation scheme for a building microgrid with a rooftop greenhouse in islanded mode is proposed in this paper. In islanded mode, the fulfillment of entire demand is challenging due to the absence of connection with the utility grid and the scarcity [...] Read more.

An optimal operation scheme for a building microgrid with a rooftop greenhouse in islanded mode is proposed in this paper. In islanded mode, the fulfillment of entire demand is challenging due to the absence of connection with the utility grid and the scarcity of local resources. The situation becomes more challenging when one or more pieces of equipment fail during the islanded mode. Therefore, in addition to islanded mode operation, component outage and recovery are also considered in this paper. In order to use the available energy efficiently, prioritization of building loads and control parameters of the greenhouse are proposed. A priority weight matrix is adopted to decide the supply of energy to fulfill the requirements of control parameters in the case of insufficient energy. In addition to the normal operation bounds, new bounds are defined to operate the control parameters if the resources are not sufficient. Additional penalties are imposed if the new bounds are chosen, due to violation of the normal operation range. The microgrid system is rescheduled if any component outage or recovery is detected from the outage point to the end of the scheduling horizon. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by carrying out several simulations including component outage, component recovery, and simultaneous outage of two or more types of equipment. Numerical simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed operation scheme for optimal operation of building microgrids with a rooftop greenhouse in islanded mode. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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26 pages, 2556 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring Algorithm Based on Non-Uniform Sampling of Power Data and Deep Neural Networks

by Marco Fagiani, Roberto Bonfigli, Emanuele Principi, Stefano Squartini and Luigi Mandolini

Energies 2019, 12(7), 1371; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12071371 - 09 Apr 2019

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 3516

Abstract

Nowadays, measurement systems strongly rely on the Internet of Things paradigm, and typically involve miniaturized devices on purpose. In these devices, the computational resources and signal acquisition rates are limited in order to preserve battery life. In addition, the amount of streamed data [...] Read more.

Nowadays, measurement systems strongly rely on the Internet of Things paradigm, and typically involve miniaturized devices on purpose. In these devices, the computational resources and signal acquisition rates are limited in order to preserve battery life. In addition, the amount of streamed data is affected by the network capacity strictly related to the transmission protocol constraints and the environmental conditions. All those limitations are in contrast with the need of exploiting all possible signal details for the task under study. In the specific application of interest, i.e., Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), they could lead to low performance in the energy disaggregation process. To overcome these issues, an ad hoc data reduction policy needs to be adopted, in order to reduce the acquisition and elaboration burden of the device, and, at the same time, to ensure compliance with network bandwidth limits while maintaining a reliable signal representation. Moved by these motivations, an extended evaluation study concerning the application of data reduction strategy to the aggregate signal is presented in this work. In particular, a non-uniform subsampling (NUS) scheme is defined together with a uniform subsampling (US) strategy and compared, in terms of disaggregation performance, with the use of data at original sampling (OS) rate. A Deep Learning based technique is used for disaggregation, having the aggregate active power signal sampled according to diverse sampling schema mentioned above as input. The approaches are tested on the UK-DALE and REDD datasets, and the combination of US+NUS configurations allows for achieving a good performance in terms of

F_{1}

-score, even superior than the one obtained with the OS rate, and a remarkable data reduction at the same time. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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13 pages, 1116 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simplified Neural Network Model Design with Sensitivity Analysis and Electricity Consumption Prediction in a Commercial Building

by Moon Keun Kim, Jaehoon Cha, Eunmi Lee, Van Huy Pham, Sanghyuk Lee and Nipon Theera-Umpon

Energies 2019, 12(7), 1201; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12071201 - 28 Mar 2019

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3015

Abstract

With growing urbanization, it has become necessary to manage this growth smartly. Specifically, increased electrical energy consumption has become a rapid urbanization trend in China. A building model based on a neural network was proposed to overcome the difficulties of analytical modelling. However, [...] Read more.

With growing urbanization, it has become necessary to manage this growth smartly. Specifically, increased electrical energy consumption has become a rapid urbanization trend in China. A building model based on a neural network was proposed to overcome the difficulties of analytical modelling. However, increased amounts of data, repetitive computation, and training time become a limitation of this approach. A simplified model can be used instead of the full order model if the performance is acceptable. In order to select effective data, Mean Impact Value (MIV) has been applied to select meaningful data. To verify this neural network method, we used real electricity consumption data of a shopping mall in China as a case study. In this paper, a Bayesian Regularization Neural Network (BRNN) is utilized to avoid overfitting due to the small amount of data. With the simplified data set, the building model showed reasonable performance. The mean of Root Mean Square Error achieved is around 10% with respect to the actual consumption and the standard deviation is low, which reflects the model’s reliability. We also compare the results with our previous approach using the Levenberg–Marquardt back propagation (LM-BP) method. The main difference is the output reliability of the two methods. LM-BP shows higher error than BRNN due to overfitting. BRNN shows reliable prediction results when the simplified neural network model is applied. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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9 pages, 1626 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Comparative Analysis of Sunshine Duration Effects in terms of Renewable Energy Production Rates on The LEED BD + C Projects in Turkey

by Aynur Kazaz and Seyda Adiguzel Istil

Energies 2019, 12(6), 1116; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12061116 - 22 Mar 2019

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2848

Abstract

Global warming has been on the agenda over the past few years. Solutions to global warming and energy efficiency problems have brought with them the need for green building market. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a certification system regulating the [...] Read more.

Global warming has been on the agenda over the past few years. Solutions to global warming and energy efficiency problems have brought with them the need for green building market. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is a certification system regulating the compliance of green buildings to certain standards and is essential for construction projects focusing on sustainability and innovation. This study investigates the effects of sunshine duration on construction projects reducing annual electricity consumption and increasing renewable energy production. In this study, the effects of sunshine duration times on construction projects are located in different cities in Turkey which has gained point from LEED BD+C (NC) (LEED, Building Design + Construction: New Construction) certificate were analyzed with the help of getting the impact of annual electricity consumption and renewable energy production rates. It was our aim that the results will be used for construction projects in compliance with the “Energy and Atmosphere” category of the LEED BD+C certification system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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24 pages, 9658 KiB

Open AccessArticle

How Reliable Are Standard Thermal Response Tests? An Assessment Based on Long-Term Thermal Response Tests Under Different Operational Conditions

by Javier F. Urchueguía, Lenin-Guillermo Lemus-Zúñiga, Jose-Vicente Oliver-Villanueva, Borja Badenes, Miguel A. Mateo Pla and José Manuel Cuevas

Energies 2018, 11(12), 3347; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11123347 - 30 Nov 2018

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2767

Abstract

In this contribution, we analyze the results of a number of thermal response test (TRT) experiments performed during several years at the same location at our university campus in Valencia (Spain), a permeable saturated soil area with possible groundwater flow conditions. A combination [...] Read more.

In this contribution, we analyze the results of a number of thermal response test (TRT) experiments performed during several years at the same location at our university campus in Valencia (Spain), a permeable saturated soil area with possible groundwater flow conditions. A combination of different heat injection rates, TRT operation times of up to 32 days, and various methods for parameter estimation of ground thermal properties have been applied to study their influence on the result and accuracy of TRTs. Our main objective has been to experimentally quantify the influence of groundwater flow heat advection using moving infinite and finite line-source theories, as well as to analyze the influence of factors such as test duration, sensor accuracy, and external thermal influences. We have shown that the traditionally used infinite and finite line-source models, as well as the moving line-source models, can accurately represent experimental temperature evolution, but that there are many caveats regarding the significance parameters extracted and its reproducibility and stability. These features can be improved if data from the first test days are disregarded for the analysis, obtaining a much faster convergence to the definitive soil parameter estimates, including the effective Péclet number that represents groundwater flow in our particular case. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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21 pages, 2857 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Evaluation of Radiant Heating Ceiling Systems Based on Thermal Comfort Criteria

by M. Reza Safizadeh, Marcel Schweiker and Andreas Wagner

Energies 2018, 11(11), 2932; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11112932 - 26 Oct 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4129

Abstract

Low-temperature radiant heating systems can be considered as suitable candidates for the refurbishment of old heating systems. These systems are proven to save energy, however, their drawback is their impact on the creation of radiant temperature asymmetry and local thermal discomfort, especially in [...] Read more.

Low-temperature radiant heating systems can be considered as suitable candidates for the refurbishment of old heating systems. These systems are proven to save energy, however, their drawback is their impact on the creation of radiant temperature asymmetry and local thermal discomfort, especially in old buildings where the temperatures of surfaces (for example external walls with a low level of insulation and large windows) are low. This study aims to evaluate the potential application of low-temperature radiant ceiling heating systems (28–38 °C) in old and energy-renovated buildings, based on subjective experiments and thermal comfort criteria such as thermal sensation, comfort, satisfaction, and sensation asymmetry votes. Later, in the Discussion section, the guideline for the radiant temperature asymmetry for the warm ceiling presented in ASHRAE Standard-55 is corrected for relatively low air temperatures and different surface temperatures corresponding to “about neutral” conditions for winter clothing. Findings of this research show that the radiant ceiling heating system operating at low temperatures (33–38 °C) can provide fairly neutral thermal sensation and satisfactory comfort at the majority of body-parts, if the building envelope satisfies advanced building energy-efficiency regulations. Additionally, the experimental analyses imply that limitation of 5% suggested by ASHRAE-55 for the percentage of dissatisfied occupants feeling uncomfortable due to overhead radiation can be elevated to 10%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Use of Energy in Buildings)

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