Search

This study investigates an energy-inefficient council housing tower block in London, due for retrofit, by exploring the correlations between occupancy and energy consumption patterns, thermal comfort and building energy performance in the winter. The aim of this study is to evaluate the building performance and develop a reliable building simulation model to be employed in the second phase of the study for developing an energy-efficient and cost-effective retrofit strategy to support the council's plans. The research seeks to demonstrate the significance of using dominant occupancy and energy use profiles as opposed to relying on standardised profiles when calculating building energy consumption using building simulation software. The paper reports on the results from the first phase of the study where a quantitative methodology; including a questionnaire, structured interviews, indoor monitoring, and building simulation modelling was adopted. The results provide evidence that occupants’ socio-demographic characteristics have a considerable impact on household energy consumption and fuel bills. The results also show that indoor environmental issues experienced in many flats are partly attributed to the thermally inefficient building envelope and partly due to occupants’ patterns of operating their homes with evidence of excessive heating energy use in attempts to alleviate the indoor issues experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social housing sector is very important in Brazil, due to the necessity of expansion and investments being placed through a substantial government program. Residential buildings are expected to last at least 50 years according to Brazilian standards. Many residential projects in the sector already perform medium or poorly in terms of energy efficiency and thermal comfort today, and their designs are not analysed considering climate change. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the result of analysing the thermal and energy performance of social housing projects considering climate change, and to assess the impact on the operational phase of introducing energy efficiency measures in the sector, and exploring methods of adaptation to climate change. A representative project of the lower income sector housing was used as case study with the evaluation of measures through thermal and energy simulation with current and future weather files for the cities of São Paulo and Salvador. Results were compared using predicted energy consumption and cooling and heating degree-hours as indicators. The results highlighted some differences related to the climate scenarios and indicator analysed, and showed that the incorporation of energy efficiency measures in current social housing projects is of fundamental importance to minimize the effects of climate change in the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]