e80^3-Buildings - Sub project 5: Monitoring and dissemination

This project is a subproject of the flagship project "e80^3-Buildings - Renovation Concepts for Residential Buildings to Plus-Energy Buildings with Prefabricated Active Roof-and Façade Modules, Integrated Building Services and Grid Integration"

Starting point/Motivation

The aim of the project "e80^3" is the development of high-performance renovation concepts for plus-energy-buildings and the realization of one demonstration-project. The highperformance renovation of the building envelope with passive house components and the integration of energy producing active elements (solar thermal and photovoltaic panels), together with the grid integration of electricity and heat, enables a plus energy building in retrofit.

The validation of the implemented solutions by a detailed monitoring and the dissemination of the developed concepts to a wider public (decision makers, planners and executors) are the fundamental requirements to get to a serial production and are objectives of this subproject 5 (SP5).

Finally this evaluation contributes to the profound verification of the ecological and energyefficient function of the building and therefore to the rapid and wide market launch.

Contents and Objectives

The main objectives of SP5 are the energetic and the building biological assessments of the demonstration building in Kapfenberg, which was constructed within the frame of the "Building of Tomorrow Plus" programme. Besides these assessments the user acceptance will be also evaluated and shown.

The specific goals of the SP5 "monitoring and dissemination" are:

• Evaluation of the total energy balance and the individual energy flows
• Development of the monitoring concept
• Installation of the monitoring equipment during the realization of the building
• Evaluation and analysis of the monitoring results
• Comparison of the calculated data with the measured data
• Quality assurance before, during and after the renovation
• Awareness-raising for a sustainable energy-efficient use of the apartments (residents and property management)
• Participation in national and international congresses and workshops

Methods

Subproject 5 is divided into 5 work packages, which have following focus:

• The concept preparation, the installation and the initial operation of the monitoring equipment were done on site.
• Maintenance and the regular check of the installed monitoring equipment, on-going recordings, transfer and analysis of the measured data, together with the evaluation of the results.
• Quality assurance, the project documentation according to TQB and klimaaktiv, the efficiency analysis and the ecological valuation.
• Interviews and surveys to evaluate the user acceptance and the experiences.
• Communication, participation in meetings, organisation of events, giving lectures, organisation of excursions as well as the project presentation on different websites and the writing of articles.

Results

The validation of the implemented renovation solutions by the monitoring, the data analysis and the user evaluations showed that plus-energy-buildings after renovation are possible but only with very high use of renewable energy sources and also high-tech equipment. To reach plus-energy the optimization of the technical equipment and also an awareness-raising of the tenants are required in any case.

Clustering several existing buildings, with different types of usage (e.g. residential buildings, office buildings, care homes...), would be very beneficial and useful. In this way energy production and use could be optimized.

A high performance renovation in compliance with ambitious sustainability criteria is possible. Higher grading is only possible with additional costs.

Prospects / Suggestions for future research

Further research and development should focus on the profitability of the building services
for plus-energy-buildings in renovation. This is the requirement for the rapid and wide market application in future.

Additionally, for high performance renovations the optimization of the energy systems, including possible ways of energy distribution in the building or in the façade, is a forwardlooking topic. For the authors also the integration of further building services components in the façade shows high potential.

The comprehensive monitoring has shown that the use of passive house technologies in the renovation, together with the realignment of the building to an energy producer, was possible but due to the low energy prices not extremely economical.

On part of the authors the future research focus of the renovations to plus-energy should include aspects of low-tech renovations, economy and sustainability in a greater extent.