Building energy modeling at neighborhood scale
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Building energy modeling at neighborhood scale Guglielmina Mutani
&
Valeria Todeschi
Received: 21 October 2019 / Accepted: 30 June 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The urban climate and outdoor air quality of cities that have a positive thermal balance depending on the thermal consumptions of buildings cause an increase of the urban heat island and global warming effects. The aim of this work has been to develop an energy balance using the energy consumption data of the district heating network. The here presented engineering energy model is at a neighborhood scale, and the energy-use results have been obtained from a heat balance of residential buildings, by means of a quasi-steady state method, on a monthly basis. The modeling approach also considers the characteristics of the urban context that may have a significant effect on its energy performance. The model includes a number of urban variables, such as solar exposition and thermal radiation lost to the sky of the built environment. This methodology was applied to thirty-three 1 km × 1 km meshes in the city of Turin, using the monthly energy consumption data of three consecutive heating seasons. The results showed that the model is accurate for old built areas; the average error is 10% for buildings constructed before 1970, while the error reaches 20% for newer buildings. The importance and originality of this study are related to the fact that the energy balance is applied at neighborhood scale and urban parameters are introduced with the support
G. Mutani (*) Department of Energy—R3C, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy e-mail: [email protected] V. Todeschi Department of Energy—FULL, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
of a GIS tool. The resulting engineering models can be applied as a decision support tool for citizens, public administrations, and policy makers to evaluate the distribution of energy consumptions and the relative GHG emissions to promote a more sustainable urban environment. Future researches will be carried out with the aim of introducing other urban variables into the model, such as the canyon effect and the presence of vegetation. Keywords Building energy balance . Engineering model . Residential buildings . Neighborhood scale . Urban variables . Georeferenced information
Introduction New urban development is an opportunity to combat climate change and to create new livable and energy efficient urban areas in order to obtain better environmental sustainability (Dogan and Reinhart 2017). Cities around the world have begun to set targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in order to achieve low environmental impacts and to address climate change (Sokol et al. 2017). The energy consumption of buildings has a significant impact on urban sustainability and climate change, and these phenomena are more pronounced in high-density urban contexts. Cities are responsible for 75% of GHG emissions, and the building and transport sectors are the main contributors (UNEP 2018). In rece
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