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Edge computing is attracting an increasing attention presently even though most of the building energy efficiency solutions are still using cloud computing for gathering, pre-processing and analyzing energy data. However, edge computing still requires more power in order to be used alone to meet the high computation demand of artificial intelligence based energy saving solutions. Meanwhile, a hybrid edge-cloud architecture can be the best current approach to implement energy efficiency systems. It provides end-users and utility companies with a flexible control of their energy usage footprints, minimizes the cost of cloud hosting, and improves privacy-preservation. Accordingly, in this paper, we present a novel energy efficiency system based on a hybrid edge-cloud computing architecture. To analyze energy and occupancy data collected through different smart meters and occupancy sensors, we use a micro-moment approach to cluster energy observations into different categories representing both normal and abnormal energy usage. Following, a deep micro-moments (deepM2) scheme is deployed to automate the Anomaly Detection task, where a new approach called deepM2-AD is developed. Moving forward, deepM2-AD is implemented on three different architectures, defined as edge-only, cloud-only and hybrid edge-cloud to evaluate their performance and identify their merits and demerits. Overall, the hybrid edge-cloud architecture has presented the best compromise in terms of improving the processing speed, curtailing the cost of cloud hosting, and reducing the communication latency. Therefore, it has a great potential for supporting real-time energy consumption anomaly detection applications that help in minimizing wasted energy. 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Acknowledgments. This paper was made possible by National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) grant No. 10-0130-170288 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. Scopus

Green roofs are a recurrent solution for improving environmental quality in buildings. Such systems can, among other things, reduce the urban heat island effect, improve indoor thermal comfort and visual quality, and reduce energy consumption in buildings, therefore promoting human comfort. This work presents the winter monitoring of a light-weight green roof assembly with the potential to be implemented in extensive urban areas. The green roof monitoring was compared to those of previous bituminous and cool-coating applications. Results show that the system was able to decrease heat losses maintaining a positive energy flow from solar radiation gains and a more constant indoor temperature. In a well-insulated construction, the impact during the cold season was discreet. However, compared to the reference building, a slightly lower indoor air temperature (about 1 °C) was registered.

Ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems are the main energy consumers in building sector. Improving the energy consumption of these systems, while satisfying the occupants’ comfort, is the major concern of control and automation designers and researchers. Model predictive control (MPC) methods have been widely studied in order to reduce the energy usage while enhancing the occupants’ comfort. In this paper, a generalized predictive control (GPC) algorithm based on controlled auto-regressive integrated moving average is investigated for standalone ventilation systems’ control. A building’s ventilation system is first modeled together with the GPC and MPC controllers. Simulations have been conducted for validation purposes and are structured into two main parts. In the first part, we compare the MPC with two traditional controllers, while the second part is dedicated to the comparison of the MPC against the GPC controller. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the GPC in reducing the energy consumption by about 4.34% while providing significant indoor air quality improvement.

The trend in energy consumption, with a particular focus on heating and cooling demand, is an issue that is relevant to the promotion of new energy policies and more efficient energy systems. Moreover, heating and cooling energy demand is expected to rise in the next several decades, mainly due to climate change as well as increasing incomes in developing countries. In this context, the building sector is currently a relevant energy-intensive economic sector in Morocco; it accounts for 33% of the country’s total energy demand (as the sector with the second highest energy demand, after the transport sector), with the residential sector accounting for 25% and the tertiary sector accounting for 8%. Aiming to reduce energy dependence and promote sustainable development, the Moroccan government recently issued a comprehensive plan to increase the share of renewables and improve energy efficiency. This strategy includes novel thermal building regulations promoted by the Moroccan Agency for Energy Efficiency. This paper analyzes the thermal behavior and heating-cooling energy demand of a residential building located in Tangier (Morocco) as a case example, based on the country’s new thermal regulations and considering specific climatological conditions. A comparison with common Moroccan residential buildings as well as with those in nearby countries with similar meteorological conditions but significant differences in terms of energy demand regulation and requirements, such as Spain, is also included. Simulations were carried out using the DesingBuilder and EnergyPlus Software packages. According to the results, the last building thermal regulation requirements in Morocco need to be revised and extended in order to achieve the energy efficiency objectives established by the Moroccan government for 2030.

Cool roof effectiveness in improving building thermal-energy performance is affected by different variables. In particular, roof insulation level and climate conditions are key parameters influencing cool roofs benefits and whole building energy performance. This work aims at assessing the role of cool roof in the optimum roof configuration, i.e., combination of solar reflectance capability and thermal insulation level, in terms of building energy performance in different climate conditions worldwide. To this aim, coupled dynamic thermal-energy simulation and optimization analysis is carried out. In detail, multi-dimensional optimization of combined building roof thermal insulation and solar reflectance is developed to minimize building annual energy consumption for heating-cooling. Results highlight how a high reflectance roof minimizes annual energy need for a small standard office building in the majority of considered climates. Moreover, building energy performance is more sensitive to roof solar reflectance than thermal insulation level, except for the coldest conditions. Therefore, for the selected building, the optimum roof typology presents high solar reflectance capability (0.8) and no/low insulation level (0.00-0.03 m), except for extremely hot or cold climate zones. Accordingly, this research shows how the classic approach of super-insulated buildings should be reframed for the office case toward truly environmentally friendly buildings. The work was partially funded by the Spanish government (RTI2018-093849-B-C31). This work was partially supported by ICREA under the ICREA Academia programme. Dr. Alvaro de Gracia has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 712949 (TECNIOspring PLUS) and from the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia. This publication has emanated from research supported (in part) by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under the SFI Strategic Partnership Programme Grant Number SFI/15/SPP/E3125.

This work reports a contribution, in a model predictive control multi-agent systems context, introducing a novel integrative methodology to manage energy networks from the demand-side point of view, in the strong presence of intermittent energy sources, including energy storage in households or car batteries. In particular, the article presents a control-based solution for indoor comfort, which, in addition, optimizes the usage of a limited shared energy resource. The control management is applied, in a distributed way, to a set of so-called thermal control areas (TCAs) and demand units, with the objective of minimizing the cost of energy while maintaining the indoor temperature within the comfort zone bounds, and simultaneously not exceeding a limited amount of shared renewable energy. The thermal control areas are, in general, thermodynamically connected, and are also coupled by energy interrelation constraints established in the particular optimization solution. Energy management is performed with a fixed sequential order established from a previously carried out auction, wherein the bids are made by each unit&rsquo, s demands, acting as demand-side management agents, based on the daily energy price. The developed solution is explained by a basic algorithm that has been applied to different scenarios, and the results have been compared so as to illustrate the benefits and flexibility of the proposed approach, showing less energy consumption and a 37% cost saving.

The requirement of a minimum air flow rates in dwellings is new in the Spanish regulation. The value of the minimum air flow rate for each room of the dwelling depends on the type of room, its occupation or its dimensions. To achieve these air flow rates, in the houses built in the Basque Country, mechanical ventilation systems are installed, usually: simple flow with continuous extraction, hygrorregulated simple flow or double flow with heat recovery ventilation systems. The permeability of the envelope is a very important parameter, that must be cared for the correct performance of the ventilation system installed. This performance must be measured in terms of energy consumption, but also in terms of indoor air quality, because the objective of the ventilation system is to ensure an adequate indoor air quality. It has been analyzed the quality of indoor air and the energy consumption of a dwelling for the three systems of ventilation, and for three levels of permeability. The analysis of the indoor air quality has been done checking 15 contaminants. As conclusion, we can say that in the case of the two simple flow ventilation systems, the permeability affect mainly on the indoor air quality, but in the case of the double flow with heat recovery ventilation systems on the energy consumption.

The role of building occupants in energy-savings opportunities is attracting the attention of professionals and scientists with the purpose of developing innovative and effective strategies for energy efficiency in buildings. People’s awareness about energy consumption, and the “green” attitudes of building occupants, have been acknowledged to be responsible for reducing energy demand in buildings. In light of this view, this chapter discusses how to describe and take advantage of people’s behavior in building thermal-energy assessment issues. Finally, the literature dealing with the possibility of triggering energy-conscious behaviors and further cost-effective energy-savings opportunities, i.e., the human-based energy retrofit, is discussed.

Environmental certification is a key issue for improving energy efficiency, minimizing energy consumption and allowing greater transparency on energy uses in buildings. If sustainability of the building process is an already consolidated issue for new constructions, as well as for existing buildings, for traditional and historic buildings a dedicated consideration still must be carried out, due to the major complexity of the variables to be taken into account. This paper deals with the criticality of applying LEED® Italia rating systems for New Construction and Major Renovation to the case study of an ancient stable located in correspondence to a Middle Age fortress in Perugia, Italy. This gap analysis process shows the weakness of existing tools when applied to the historical context, by highlighting the need of a new assessment framework in case of restoration and preservation processes. GBC Historic Building™, a new rating system that GBC Italia is now developing, offers the opportunity to combine framework and criteria of the International LEED® standards and the specific knowledge of the restoration and preservation theory and practice. The case study highlights possible modifications and integrations of the existing LEED®/GBC topics, with the ultimate purpose of bridging the gap between energy efficiency, environmental sustainability and cultural heritage preservation.

This article reports on the performance of a ground source heat pump system installed in a New Municipality Hall in Northern Greece over an eight-year operation period. The system consists of a vertical ground heat exchanger, 21 boreholes in 80 m depth, 11 water-to-water heat pump units. Basic parameters of its operation are continuously monitoring by a data acquisition system. Based on these recordings, heat transfer flows from/to the building and the ground were calculated in order to estimate the performance of the system. It is found that the maximum ground heat exchanger load reaches 50 W/m in heating operation while in cooling mode it ranges between 20 and 210 W/m. The Weekly Performance Factor of the heat pumps as well as the Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio were found to be between 5.0–6.2 and 4.5–5.5 in heating mode and 4.1–5.9 and 3.6–4.5 in cooling mode, respectively. Compared to a conventional heating and cooling system for this building, the ground source heat pump consumes 25.7% less primary energy and emits lower CO2 and NOx emissions by 22.7% and 99.6% respectively, but its SO2 emissions are 18.4% higher.

Buildings are responsible for about the 40% of the global annual energy consumption, therefore, innovative strategies for buildings’ energy efficiency are under development. Strategies of re-roofing with “cool” materials have a non-negligible cooling energy saving potential, as they contribute to the reduction of the peak ambient temperatures during summer and, moreover, they contribute to the improvement of the urban microclimate by decreasing the intensity of heat island phenomena. In this paper, the experimental characterization and optimization of a new membrane for buildings’ roof is carried out. To this aim, laboratory measurements were performed to determine its optic-energy properties and, therefore, to optimize its “cool roof” behavior. A full scale field test was also setup in order to measure the global solar radiation reflected by each membrane, before and after optimization, with varying boundary conditions, e.g. time during the day, seasonal period, and weather conditions. The in-field experimental campaign allowed to characterize the optic-energy behavior of the cool membranes in real boundary conditions, showing non-negligible variation of measured solar reflection capability with varying environmental constraints in winter conditions. The research showed interesting results from the in-lab optimization campaign, and non-negligible unreliability due to environmental agents affecting in-field albedo measurement.

This chapter discusses different platforms for buildings exploiting novel technologies based on sensor networks, smart meters and database management systems to collect and store energy-related data. It also discusses novel analytical tools and data mining algorithms proposed in the literature for buildings to (i) characterize energy consumption, (ii) identify the main factors that increase energy consumption, (iii) detect faults, and (iv) enhance user energy awareness. Finally, the perspectives offered by energy-related data analytics are outlined, showing how analysis techniques can be profitably exploited to enhance user energy awareness and reduce building energy consumption.

Summarization: The energy benchmarking, rating and classification of buildings are necessary procedures for energy certification scheme adoption, energy regulation establishment, energy-efficiency promotion and energy consumption reduction, according to the Directive 2002/91/EC and its implementation in EU member states. The aim of this paper is to investigate and present research works, tools and programs focused on energy benchmarking methods, energy rating procedures and classification schemes for the building sector. The European Committee for Standardization method of benchmarking and rating for buildings are analyzed, as well as a proposed integrated classification method based on the application of clustering techniques to virtual building data sets of office buildings in Greece. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: Journal of Advances in Building Energy Research

Energy consumption increases in all end-use demand sectors, but in the buildings sector it grows fastest throughout the projection. In this sector, the recent energy sustainability polices has strongly addressed energy efficiency strategies in order to stabilize or reduce the energy demand growth, because recognized as essential and cost-effective ones. Stakeholders and scientists have recognized wireless sensor networks (WSN) as challenging and enabling technology for achieving energy efficiency in buildings, allowing to individuals to monitor, control the electricity demand of all appliances in the households or offices as well as of computing hardware and related infrastructures in data centers (DCs). More recent energy-aware systems, WSN-based, are essentially based on continued and timely monitoring approaches of the power usage by the electrical appliances in a building, standing out for the type of sensors they use or the spatial granularity used for collecting data. An issue that these energy-aware systems have not taken into account, and which the system and the method proposed in this research work addresses, is that monitoring buildings' air quality, safety and environmental conditions coupled with energy power usage enables more effective energy savings strategies in buildings. The sensing system and method here presented for achieving energy efficiency in the building sector is based on wireless multi-sensor modules provided with on-board intelligence, capable of obtaining real-time information on energy consumption, quality of the air, environmental variables, and occupation of the premises. These intelligent sensing devices are organized in a multilevel architecture of intelligent sensor network to enable continued, pervasive and distributed monitoring aimed at making the user more aware of energy consumptions and enabling active control polices for energy-consuming systems, in order to optimize the power usage.

The studies presented here have shown that it is fully possible to influence energy consumption through information. An increase in the knowledge among consumers will motivate them to be more energy efficient. Since several interrelated factors are involved in this knowledge level, it is difficult to establish the individual influences but such factors as the electricity bills, electricity metering, discounting and even general information campaigns, have shown to give a positive results. Energy efficiency through investment leads to long lasting results, while the effects of behavioural change may diminish very rapidly. Various investigations have shown different results. Some of them showed decreasing effect after just a week whereas others led to significantly longer lasting results. There was, however, a tendency showing that the longer the duration of the trial or the larger the information quantity contributions were, the more prolonged were the effects.

Thermally activated building systems (TABS) consist of pipes or ducts embedded in the building structure. This is a well-known technology for its capability to reduce energy use for cooling buildings. Additionally, TABS help integrating renewable energies, such as free-cooling with ground heat exchangers (GHE). However, TABS cooling load is sensitive to the internal load, and the use of GHE for free-cooling is limited to low energy buildings. In a previously published research, a radiant wall cubicle without internal gains demonstrated to achieve significant energy savings. However, the current research showed that under domestic and office scheduled internal gains equivalent to 42 W·m-2 the radiant cubicle increased its energy consumption for cooling more than the reference cubicle with air-to-air heat pumps. As a result, the radiant cubicle used around 20% more energy than the reference at air temperature set-point 24 ºC but saved around 20% compared to the reference at 26 ºC. Despite this, the radiant wall could still reduce the cooling cost through peak load shifting even though it showed to consume more energy than a conventional HP. The work was partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER), ENE2015-64117-C5-3-R (MINECO/FEDER), and ULLE10-4E-1305). GREA is certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2014 SGR 123) and the city hall of Puigverd de Lleida. This projects has received funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) under Grant agreement Nº PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE) and from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 657466 (INPATH-TES). Alvaro de Gracia would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014-19940.