Effectiveness of interventions on energy and cost to convert efficient building by considering hourly statistical analysis of building envelope retrofitting

Abstract

The amount of energy consumption of buildings has obtained international concern so the concept of efficient energy building becomes a target for building designers. There are various definitions and evaluation methods for efficient buildings. However, detailed research about the critical parameters that have a major effect through the operational time to reduce the energy consumption is not emphasized as this research represents. This study identifies the effect of applicable interventions on energy consumption parameters with their sensitivity to each other to reach efficient energy building. Relatedly, the cost of energy reduction is also determined. In the next step, hourly investigation assesses to further improve building envelop. Energy performance analysis combined with the white-box and statistic methods is exploited in the study. An educational-office building in the Mediterranean climate simulated by e-Quest to estimate electric and gas consumption; Results indicated the main energy consumption of the building is relative to electric consumption. In the following steps, sensitivity analysis was performed for cost and energy consumption for eight scenarios that include thermal performance of walls, roof, windows, assign shading devices, replacing lamps, dimming sensors, solar systems, and heat pumps. After analyzing each scenario an envelope retrofitting scenario was suggested by a compound of passive strategies ( thermal performance of walls, roof, windows, assign shading devices ), which saved gas consumption by approximately 82% and electric consumption by about 2%. A compound of active strategies ( replacing lamps, dimming sensors, solar systems, and heat pumps ), which cover gas and electric demand. In the second step, as a state of the art of this study, the hourly investigations of passive strategies were performed to demonstrate the side effects, which limited the rate of improvements in the envelope retrofitting scenario. Hourly negative effects had been presented. Dependency analysis of consumer parameters proved that the main object should be hourly consumption of the cooling system because of trapping heat inside the building, which causes undesirable influence during the transition months. Consequently, energy consumption of cooling system decreased by 41.44% which was 16.16% in envelope retrofitting scenario. Thus, the hourly investigation leads to increase energy performance more than traditional methods.