Extending the Application of the Smart Readiness Indicator—A Methodology for the Quantitative Assessment of the Load Shifting Potential of Smart Districts

Abstract

<jats:p>In 2018, the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) included for the first time the application of a smart readiness indicator (SRI). Based on the fact that load shifting in and across buildings plays an increasingly important role to improve efficiency and alleviate the integration of renewable energy systems, the SRI is also aimed at providing an indication of how well buildings can interact with the energy grids. With the clustering of buildings into larger entities, synergies related to the integration of renewable energy and load shifting can be efficiently exploited. However, current proposals for the SRI focus mainly on qualitative appraisals of the smartness of buildings and do not include the wider context of the districts. Quantitative approaches that can be easily applied at an early planning stage are still mostly missing. To optimize infrastructure decisions on a larger scale, a quantifiable perspective beyond the building level is necessary to evaluate and leverage the larger load shifting capacities. This article builds on a previously published methodology for smart buildings with the aim to provide a numerical model-based approach on the assessment of whole districts based on their overall energy storage capacity, load shifting potential and their ability to actively interact with the energy grids. It also delivers the equivalent CO2 savings potential compared to a non-interactive system. The methodology is applied to theoretical use cases for validation. The results highlight that the proposed quantitative model can provide a meaningful and objective assessment of the load shifting potentials of smart districts.</jats:p>

Occupant-Facade interaction: a review and classification scheme

“…Multi-disciplinary research on occupant interaction has mainly focused on understanding occupant behaviour in relation to its effect on energy efficiency [21,28,29], while single discipline researches have mainly investigated occupant interaction with individual aspects of automation systems, such as automation level [30], occupant decision process [31], factors influencing occupant behaviour [24] or occupant-centred control strategies for automated services or facades [5]. Very few aspects have been investigated from more than one discipline, such as the impact of contextual factors on occupant behaviour [26,34]. Two studies in particular have framed occupant interaction in a multi-discipline perspective, which includes environmental, personal and behavioural aspects: i) D'Oca et al [21] provides a high-level framework for classifying impactful factors in occupant interaction with buildings; factors are classified under three different domains: environmental, personal and behavioural; within the environmental factors, social and physical factors are evaluated separately; environmental physical factors could potentially include the level of automation and interaction of occupant with intelligent facades or buildings; ii) Von Grabe [33] specifies a larger number of environmental and building factors and provides a preliminary framework that includes both physical (building and environmental), individual and social factors.…”

“…Similarly, Occupant-Facade Interactions are not currently regulated by EU standards or guidelines. The only exception is the 2018 revision of the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) [34], which aims to further promote smart building technologies and establish Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) for buildings, with a focus on comfort, convenience, wellbeing & health, maintenance & fault prediction and information to occupants. However, the EPBD does not provide guidelines for a satisfactory design of Occupant-Facade interaction.…”

Building Information Modeling and Digital Twin Approaches in Building Automation and Distributed IoT Networks – Review and New Challenges Discussion

“…These challenges have been undertaken by engineering and research teams for several years [10][11][12][13], but new paths and solutions in this area are still being sought. Their results include, among others, the guidelines of the already mentioned EPBD directive, the EN 15232:2017 standard, replaced by the new EN ISO 52120:2022 [14,15] and the latest SRI index initiative, which are still being developed, modified and, most importantly, verified in case studies [16][17][18]. The guidelines from these documents classify the functions and services of smart systems in building applications, depending on their level of complexity and integration, and provide indicators that enable numerical determination of the level of improvement in energy efficiency and smartness of the applied BACS systems with IoT.…”

A literature review on BIM for cities Distributed Renewable and Interactive Energy Systems

“…Designing out for NZEB compliance requires an in-depth understanding of the performance indicators (Table 4), the improvement measures (Table 5) and the elements required for the measures (Figure 5) , Kalaychioglu et al 2017, Happle et al, 2020 , Pylsy et al, 2020, Becchio et al, 2018, Marzinger et al 2020 5)…”