ASP projects

Build Smart: Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for Intelligent and Sustainable Buildings

The two teams addressed an important and topical challenge: how to design a new residential or office building achieving the best energy performance at a certain extra cost, or minimizing the extra cost required to achieve a certain energy performance. To that aim, a number of specific data bases of the most important technologies for building envelopes, thermal and air conditioning systems and renewable energy systems were prepared and specially tailored for the two building typologies analyzed. The databases include costs and energy performance of these components, along with meteorological data of different Italian cities. An original software was written for the evaluation of heating and cooling energy requirements and primary energy demand for the two building typologies. The software also performs an optimization analysis and, as an example, has been used to analyze a typical residential and office building. Both teams were composed of students with a heterogeneous background: architects, building engineers, energy and mechanical engineers and information technology engineers. They had to frequently interact and an interesting integration of their cultural background had to take place in order to achieve reasonable and consistent results. To this aim, they participated in a number of events, such as the Bologna SAIE Congress and ENI the Donegani Research Centre in Novara. Team A has devoted its analysis to office buildings while Team B worked on dwellings. The two building typologies have different energy requirements and make use of different building envelopes and installation technologies. Team A considered the heating, ventilating and cooling demand of offices while Team B focused on ambient heating and domestic hot water demand of residential buildings. On the other hand, while Team A considered only Photovoltaic Team B also considered Solar Thermal systems. All together, the efforts were well balanced between the two teams, as well as within each team.
The final result is a software tool which can be used to evaluate the energy performance of the two building typologies and identify the best set of technologies to achieve a certain target in terms of primary energy demand. The multicultural technical approach, along with the economic evaluation which is always carried out together with the technological choices, has produced an interesting and original result which may be used at the first design stage of new buildings.
Further developments may easily extend the analysis to other geographical and climatic areas, and other building typologies, while a somewhat larger effort would be required to include other energy demands such as lighting and other electrical usages. On the installation side, a more thorough analysis would be required to describe all relevant innovative technologies, especially those based on renewable energy (ground-coupled heat pumps, solar cooling, greenhouses, PV windows, etc.). Finally, the data bases would need to be periodically updated in order to take into account varying energy and component costs. Regular updating of this software will ensure its reliability, so as to make it a valuable tool for the designer.

Principal Academic Tutor
Giovanni Vincenzo Fracastoro
Energetics, Politecnico di Torino

Academic Tutors
Cristiana Bolchini
Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano
Federico Butera
Building Environment Science Technology, Politecnico di Milano
Pier Luca Lanzi
Electronics and Information, Politecnico di Milano
Bartolomeo Montrucchio
Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino
Roberto Pagani
Human Settlements Science and Technology, Politecnico di Torino
Maurizio Rebaudengo
Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino

External institution
ENI S.p.a.

External Tutors
Lorenzo De Vita
ENI S.p.a.

Team members
TEAM A
Alessandro Aimar [Team controller], Energy and Nuclear Engineering
Carlotta Berta, Building Engineering
Daniele Ferrigni, Aeronautical Engineering
Yangfan Gao, Computer Engineering
Ilaria Ricci Curbastro, Architecture
Beatrice Spolidoro, Architecture

TEAM B
Matteo Ronchi [Team controller], Mechanical Engineering
Simone Barra, Environmental and Landscape Architecture
Matteo Carminati, Computer Engineering
Chiara Gammaraccio, Building Engineering
Andrea Lambertenghi, Aeronautical Engineering
Luca Malvicino, Architecture (Urban and Territorial Design)
Xintao Ye, Architecture

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