Building Energy Performance Assessment Based on In-situ Measurements

Overview

Better prediction, characterization and quality assurance of actual building energy performance are essential to realise the anticipated world wide energy reductions in buildings and community systems. Quantifying the actual performance of buildings can only be effectively realised by optimized in-situ measurements combined with dynamic data analysis techniques. This project has advanced the development of in-use monitoring for buildings to obtain reliable quality checks of routine building construction practice to guarantee that designed performance is obtained on site.

The project focused on residential buildings, both at the level of individual dwellings, as well as at the community level. At the building level, methodologies to assess and characterise occupied buildings, controlled with the buildings’ own services were explored. Compared to the previous assessment methods, this means that the intrusive, dedicated tests are left behind in favour of assessment methods based on on-board monitoring systems. At the aggregated level (interpreted as a cluster of individual dwellings, whether an apartment building, a small neighbourhood or a district) the project developed procedures to assess large – but often rather crude – data sets that allows the identification of opportunities at the stock level. At both levels the development of characterisation methods were explored, as well as of quality assurance methods.

The project objectives were to:

• support the development of replicable characterisation and quality assurance methodologies embedded in a statistical and building physical framework to characterise and assess the actual energy performance of buildings, and
• disaggregate the building energy use to its three main sources: building fabric, systems and users.

The deliverables from this project are as follows:

• dynamic data sets (at different scales: individual building and district levels) that can be used for developing dynamic data analysis procedures and for validation purposes,
• a series of  reports covering the following topics: reliability of input data for onsite building performance assessment, dynamic data analysis methods that can be used to disaggregate occupant influences / fabric and systems at the building level, case studies at the building level, data analysis methods applicable at the district level, case studies at the district level, guidelines (possibilities and limitations) to apply the methods in quality assessment procedures
• collaboration with Dynastee, the network of excellence on full scale testing and dynamic data analysis.

The project beneficiaries are:

• the building research community and associated specialists (for example energy providers),
• engineering consultancies,
• building designers and the construction industry interested in high performance systems, and
• policy and decision makers involved in developing standards and building performance evaluation.