English

We present a method for predicting visual comfort conditions of occupants in daylit spaces. Using an online survey, 67 occupants of a multi-story open plan studio space evaluated long-term visual comfort at their workstations in a substantially daylit space which is known to have glare problems. Visual comfort simulations of each occupant’s specific location were conducted and compared to the survey results. Simulations included discomfort glare, monitor contrast, visibility of the sun in the field of view and the presence of direct light on the workplane.

Smart homes and Ambient Intelligence Environments require embedded technologies able to work and think jointly. Indeed, home technologies are expected to form together an individual supportive system whose cooperation and context awareness capabilities make it more than the sum of the different parts (equipments, functionalities, services, appliances, etc.).

Due to the development of energy performance contracting and the needs for peak electric demand reduction, the interest for optimal building control is renewed. In this context, the real time prevision and optimization of building heat demand can help the manager to reduce the energy bill and to propose peak shaving offers. Our study aims to illustrate such heat control strategies on a one floor elementary school. The building is modeled through a second order inverse “grey box” model.

This paper proposes a modeling and analysis convention for a side- and/or toplit space called the ‘reference office’. The reference office is meant to act as a baseline for comparative analyses of different façade and/or electric lighting technologies and may be used in research (facilitating the comparison of results from multiple studies) in practice (for product rating) as well as in architectural education (enabling students to contrast their design ideas to a set of standard design solutions).

The present paper analyses a case study of the application of dynamic energy simulation on the energy efficiency improvement process of an existing commercial building, the retrofit of a CHP machine for the combined generation of heat and power is analysed.

This paper reports on how sensitivity analysis techniques, applied to the inputs of calculation engines for energy certification and regulation compliance purposes, can provide guidance for simplifying their user interfaces.Two different techniques were employed: the Morris Method, used to screen the input factors, and Monte Carlo Analysis, used to assess the effects of approximations on groups of parameters.It is shown that this analysis approach can lead to useful reductions in user effort without significant loss of accuracy. 

Occupants have influence on buildings performances due to their presence and their behavior towards in-door environmental conditions controls. However, most building energy models consider occupants in an over-simplified way. Many experiences feedbacks have shown that this assessment leads to huge dif-ferences between simulation results and actual energy consumption. In this paper we propose a new method aiming at reducing this uncertainty.

The European energy policies about climate and energy packages, known as the “20-20-20” targets, define ambitious, but achievable, national energy requirements.