Browsing by Keyword "Energy efficiency"
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Item Analysis of building energy upgrade technologies for implementing the dual energy efficiency and demand response scheme for non-residential buildings(2019-09) Macías, Olga; Noyé, Sarah; Tellado, Nagore; Torrens, Ignacio; de Agustin-Camacho, Pablo; Tsagkrasoulis, Dimosthenis; Bucur, Mircea; Southernwood, Jo; Tecnalia Research & InnovationThe continuous growth of renewable energy and the transition to a more de-centralised electricity generation adds significant complexity to balance power supply and demand in the grid. These imbalances are partially compensated by demand response programs, which represent a new business opportunity in the building sector, especially for ESCOs. Including demand response to their traditional energy efficiency-based business model adds an additional revenue stream that could potentially shorten payback periods of energy renovation projects. This paper introduces this new dual-services business model, and evaluates the potential suitability of HVAC, generation and storage technologies to ensure proposed energy efficiency and flexibility goals.Item Co-creation of local eco-rehabilitation strategies for energy improvement of historic urban areas(Elsevier Ltd, 2021) Egusquiza, A.; Ginestet, S.; Espada, J.C.; Flores-Abascal, I.; Garcia-Gafaro, C.; Giraldo-Soto, C.; Claude, S.; Escadeillas, G.Energy performance and thermal comfort in historic and traditional urban environments are important because of the social and cultural requirement to conserve these areas as living entities, but also for the environmental obligation to decrease the impact of existing buildings globally. The objective of ENERPAT approach is to address this global challenge from the local perspective, through the co-creation of efficient solutions that improve the energy performance of historic areas considering local techniques and skills, taking into account the whole life cycle of the solutions, and supporting local economy and business. The objective is to test the efficiency and suitability of eco-renovation strategies that have been co-created with local stakeholders and are based on traditional energy conservation measures, as a way to work with locally-based business models that can safeguard cultural aspects and enable economic development. Two living labs have been established in the cities of Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) and Cahors (France) in two representative buildings of the historic urban area of each city. The living labs operate as inclusive multi-agent discussion arenas with a long-term vision, where multi-criteria co-creation processes are implemented to select conservation-friendly solutions based on local materials including criteria such as operational energy, impact on heritage values, quality of life, socio-economic development and easy logistics. The energy behaviour of the buildings and the hygrothermal performance of the external walls have been studied using on-site and laboratory experiments, through an efficient partnership between local authorities and universities. Likewise, local-based refurbishment solutions that were designed in the co-creation processes have been thermally characterised in the laboratory, through thermal conductivity and guarded hot box tests. Finally, the energy improvement of the whole renovation strategy has been simulated showing the enhancement of the two buildings.Item Comparison of theoretical heat transfer model with results from experimental monitoring installed in a refurbishment with ventilated facade(2020-01-24) García, Belén Zurro; Goikolea, Beñat Arregi; Martín, José Manuel González; Hernández García, José L.; EDIFICACIÓN DE ENERGÍA POSITIVAOne of the main points to consider when a building is renovated is the improvement of its energy efficiency, minimizing the heat loss through the enclosures and its heating consumption. Under this scope idea a ventilated facade was designed and incorporated in an educational building located in the city of Burgos (Spain). The main objective of this document is a comparison between the theoretical model of heat transfer across the building envelope separating the environment and the interior space, and the heat intake through a linear regression model with installed experimental monitoring. For this it has been necessary to carry out an exhaustive study of the thermal transmission of each one of the materials that make up the thermal envelope of the building, as well as the linear thermal bridges that can be produced before and after the renovation. In addition, thanks to the monitoring installed in the demonstrator building, the interior and exterior temperatures and the heat consumption of each of the radiators is known. In this way expected and real energy savings have been compared.Item Design of knowledge-based systems for automated deployment of building management services(2020-11) Schneider, Georg F.; Kontes, Georgios D.; Qiu, Haonan; Silva, Filipe J.; Bucur, Mircea; Malanik, Jakub; Schindler, Zdenek; Andriopolous, Panos; de Agustin-Camacho, Pablo; Romero-Amorrortu, Ander; Grün, Gunnar; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; LABORATORIO DE TRANSFORMACIÓN URBANA; EDIFICACIÓN DE ENERGÍA POSITIVADespite its high potential, the building's sector lags behind in reducing its energy demand. Tremendous savings can be achieved by deploying building management services during operation, however, the manual deployment of these services needs to be undertaken by experts and it is a tedious, time and cost consuming task. It requires detailed expert knowledge to match the diverse requirements of services with the present constellation of envelope, equipment and automation system in a target building. To enable the widespread deployment of these services, this knowledge-intensive task needs to be automated. Knowledge-based methods solve this task, however, their widespread adoption is hampered and solutions proposed in the past do not stick to basic principles of state of the art knowledge engineering methods. To fill this gap we present a novel methodological approach for the design of knowledge-based systems for the automated deployment of building management services. The approach covers the essential steps and best practices: (1) representation of terminological knowledge of a building and its systems based on well-established knowledge engineering methods; (2) representation and capturing of assertional knowledge on a real building portfolio based on open standards; and (3) use of the acquired knowledge for the automated deployment of building management services to increase the energy efficiency of buildings during operation. We validate the methodological approach by deploying it in a real-world large-scale European pilot on a diverse portfolio of buildings and a novel set of building management services. In addition, a novel ontology, which reuses and extends existing ontologies is presented.Item Designing a generalised reward for Building Energy Management Reinforcement Learning agents(IEEE, 2021-09-08) Martinez, Ruben Mulero; Goikolea, Benat Arregi; Beitia, Inigo Mendialdua; Martinez, Roberto Garay; Mulero, Rubén; Arregi, Beñat; Mendialdua, Iñigo; Garay, Roberto; Solic, Petar; Nizetic, Sandro; Rodrigues, Joel J. P. C.; Rodrigues, Joel J.P.C.; Gonzalez-de-Artaza, Diego Lopez-de-Ipina; Perkovic, Toni; Catarinucci, Luca; Patrono, Luigi; DIGITALIZACIÓN Y AUTOMATIZACIÓN DE LA CONSTRUCCIÓN; EDIFICACIÓN DE ENERGÍA POSITIVA; Tecnalia Research & InnovationThe reduction of the carbon footprint of buildings is a challenging task, partly due to the conflicting goals of maximising occupant comfort and minimising energy consumption. An intelligent management of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems is creating a promising research line in which the creation of suitable algorithms could reduce energy consumption maintaining occupants' comfort. In this regard, Reinforcement Learning (RL) approaches are giving a good balance between data requirements and intelligent operations to control building systems. However, there is a gap concerning how to create a generalised reward signal that can train RL agents without delimiting the problem to a specific or controlled scenario. To tackle it, an analysis and discussion is presented about the necessary requirements for the creation of generalist rewards, with the objective of laying the foundations that allow the creation of generalist intelligent agents for building energy management.Item Digital industrial furnaces: Challenges for energy efficiency under VULKANO project(2018) Antolín-Urbaneja, Juan Carlos; González-González, Asier; Lopez-Guede, Jose Manuel; López De Ipiña, Jesús; Tecnalia Research & InnovationUnder intensive industry, industrial furnaces must cope with new challenges to improve the efficiency, reliability and flexibility of their processes. As they need a great amount of energy to achieve the temperature required for heating and melting processes, many researchers have been focused on the minimization of the energy consumption. This energy optimization implies improvements, not only in the competitiveness, but also in environmental and cost performances of the process. This paper shows briefly the challenges for industrial furnaces under VULKANO project focused on the development of five approaches from the point of view of efficiency, flexibility, reliability and safety: improving refractories, investigating new recovery systems based on PCM, using alternative fuels, integrating advanced monitoring and control devices and, finally, developing a holistic tool to help the operator to make decisions. Besides, this paper describes the creation of a digital industrial furnace, regarding to digital twin term. Therefore, an analytical model comprising the burners system, the isolation structure, an energy recovery system, and the load to be heated is described. Each individual model provides the base for the development of future hybrid models, accurately parametrized through process variables, used to investigate the efficiency optimization and provide precise maintenance operation strategies.Item Energy efficiency achievements in 5 years through experimental research in KUBIK(2015-06) Garay, Roberto; Chica, José Antonio; Apraiz, Inés; Campos, José María; Tellado, Borja; Uriarte, Amaia; Sánchez, V.; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; SG; DIGITAL ENERGY; EDIFICACIÓN DE ENERGÍA POSITIVAThe European construction sector (a fragmented SMEs dominated business with high economic and environmental impact and high technological inertia) faces a major challenge to reduce the emissions by almost 90% in 2050. This requires new innovative solutions and services to be rapidly implemented in the market. Research Infrastructures that give support for later-stage developments (high Technology Readiness Levels) can play a relevant role in both the technological development and market introduction of construction products for energy efficient buildings. The following paper describes such an infrastructure (KUBIKby (Tecnalia)) located in Bilbao (Spain) and its major outcomes in the period 2011-2015.Item Energy-Aware Multi-Objective Job Shop Scheduling Optimization with Metaheuristics in Manufacturing Industries: A Critical Survey, Results, and Perspectives: A Critical Survey, Results, and Perspectives(2022-01-29) Para, Jesus; Del Ser, Javier; Nebro, Antonio J.; IAIn recent years, the application of artificial intelligence has been revolutionizing the manufacturing industry, becoming one of the key pillars of what has been called Industry 4.0. In this context, we focus on the job shop scheduling problem (JSP), which aims at productions orders to be carried out, but considering the reduction of energy consumption as a key objective to fulfill. Finding the best combination of machines and jobs to be performed is not a trivial problem and becomes even more involved when several objectives are taken into account. Among them, the improvement of energy savings may conflict with other objectives, such as the minimization of the makespan. In this paper, we provide an in-depth review of the existing literature on multi-objective job shop scheduling optimization with metaheuristics, in which one of the objectives is the minimization of energy consumption. We systematically reviewed and critically analyzed the most relevant features of both problem formulations and algorithms to solve them effectively. The manuscript also informs with empirical results the main findings of our bibliographic critique with a performance comparison among representative multi-objective evolutionary solvers applied to a diversity of synthetic test instances. The ultimate goal of this article is to carry out a critical analysis, finding good practices and opportunities for further improvement that stem from current knowledge in this vibrant research area.Item Experimental Thermal Performance Assessment of a Prefabricated External Insulation System for Building Retrofitting(ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, SARA BURGERHARTSTRAAT 25, PO BOX 211, 1000 AE AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, 2017) Garay, Roberto; Arregi, Beñat; Elguezabal, PeruExternal Thermal Insulation Composite Systems (ETICS) are increasingly used for the energy-efficient retrofit of buildings. This paper evaluates the in-situ thermal performance of a prefabricated composite panel made of PIR and concrete, by full scale testing of a prototype installed at the KUBIK test facility. Experimental results from measurement show a reduction in the thermal resistance of the ETICS assembly compared to theoretical design values. A number of phenomena have been identified causing multidimensional heat flow of conductive and convective nature,such as thermal bridges at floor slabs and anchors, and thermal bypass of the insulation causing airflow behind the ETICS.Item Exploring the role of ICT on household behavioural energy efficiency to mitigate global warming(2019-04) Bastida, Leire; Cohen, Jed J.; Kollmann, Andrea; Moya, Ana; Reichl, Johannes; ADV_INTER_PLATWith the advent of ICT in the energy system, new possibilities to inform and influence residential electricity consumption become available. We explore the potential of ICT-based interventions in households to decrease electricity usage, improve energy efficiency and thus contribute to reducing GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions from this sector. Based on a literature review on the subject, we suggest that ICT can affect some of the main behaviour-influencing factors, and discuss the causal avenues by which these effects can take hold. Our review finds that ICT-based effects on consumer behaviour can reduce household final electricity consumption by 0–5%. These and other findings from the literature are used to define parameter values, which reflect the efficacy of ICT at changing household energy usage patterns, and ultimately decreasing GHG emissions from the electricity sector. A quantitative analysis of the potential for ICT to contribute to reaching the 1.5 °C target in the context of the European Union (EU) energy sector is performed. It is found that ICT-based interventions in household energy use could contribute between 0.23% and 3.3% of the EU CO2e reduction target from the energy sector that would keep warming under 1.5 °C, corresponding to 4.5–64.7 mio. tCO2e abated per year.Item How Relevant is Energy Efficiency in The Marketing of Homes? Evidence from Real Estate Agents in Spain(2019-09-18) Marmolejo-Duarte, Carlos; Spairani, Silvia; Moral, Consuelo del; Delgado, Luis; Egusquiza, Aitziber; Ai, Chen; LABORATORIO DE TRANSFORMACIÓN URBANAIn order to foster informed transactions, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive has made it mandatory to get an Energy Performance Certificate in the marketing of the Communitarian Real Estate. Due to energy savings and environmental preservation, it is expected that efficient buildings do receive an increased willingness to pay. The evidence coming from a number of statistical studies has confirmed the existence of such premium. Nevertheless, such finding is contradictory in relation to the conclusions of opinion-based studies. This paper seeks to study whether energy efficiency drives market price and the marketing of homes in Spain. In doing so, a survey applied to realtors across the country has been implemented. The results are in line with other opinion-based studies pointing out that energy performance has a negligible impact on the marketing of homes. Furthermore, real estate agents suggest that companion policies in the sphere of subsidies and fiscal exceptions are needed in order to bring energy efficiency to the first line of elicitation attributes in the residential market.Item Innovative pre-fabricated components including different waste construction materials reducing building energy and minimising environmental impacts (InnoWEE)(2019-08-13) Fodor, Loredana; Ducman, Vilma; Ferrarini, Giovanni; Tamburini, Sergio; Tsoutis, Constantinos; Becherini, Francesca; Garrido-Marijuán, Antonio; Mezzasalma, Giulia; Rossi, Leonardo; Lezak, Emil; Bernardi, Adriana; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; EDIFICACIÓN DE ENERGÍA POSITIVAInnoWEE is a four-year project (from 2016 to 2020) financed by the European Community that involves ten partners from different European countries, as Greece, Italy, Belgium, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Poland. The aim is to use the waste materials coming from construction and demolition processes of buildings and include them into a geopolymeric matrix with the purpose of producing prefabricated panels for different applications. Construction and demolition waste (CDW) materials with suitable characteristics have been selected to develop high performance geopolymeric panels for building walls envelopes and radiant panels for indoor walls and ceilings with low environmental impact. Field tests will be carried out in different sites in Europe characterized by different climatic conditions to check the simplicity of the installation procedure and the performance of the panels in terms of energy efficiency and environmental impact.Item An Intelligent Procedure for the Methodology of Energy Consumption in Industrial Environments(Springer, 2020-10-27) Mendia, Izaskun; Gil-Lopez, Sergio; Del Ser, Javier; Grau, Iñaki; Lejarazu, Adelaida; Maqueda, Erik; Perea, Eugenio; Analide, Cesar; Novais, Paulo; Camacho, David; Yin, Hujun; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; IA; DIGITAL ENERGYThe concern of the industrial sector about the increase of energy costs has stimulated the development of new strategies for the effective management of energy consumption in industrial setups. Along with this growth, the irruption and continuous development of digital technologies have generated increasingly complex industrial ecosystems. These ecosystems are supported by a large number of variables and procedures for the operation and control of industrial processes and assets. This heterogeneous technological scenario has made industries difficult to manage by traditional means. In this context, the disruptive potential of cyber physical systems is beginning to be considered in the automation and improvement of industrial services. Particularly, intelligent data-driven approaches relying on the combination of Energy Management Systems (EMS), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Internet of Things (IoT) and Data Analytics provide the intelligence needed to optimally operate these complex industrial environments. The work presented in this manuscript contributes to the definition of the aforementioned intelligent data-driven approaches, defining a systematic, intelligent procedure for the energy efficiency diagnosis and improvement of industrial plants. This data-based diagnostic procedure hinges on the analysis of data collected from industrial plants, aimed at minimizing energy costs through the continuous assessment of the production-consumption ratio of the plant (i.e. energy per piece or kg produced). The proposed methodology aims to support managers and energy-efficiency technicians to minimize the plant’s energy consumption without affecting the production and therefore, increase its competitiveness. The data used in the design of this methodology are real data from a company dedicated to the design and manufacture of automotive components and one of the main manufacturers in the automotive sector worldwide. The present methodology is under the pending patent application EU19382002.4-120.Item A novel approach for the detection of anomalous energy consumption patterns in industrial cyber-physical systems(2024-02) Mendia, Izaskun; Gil-Lopez, Sergio; Grau, Iñaki; Del Ser, Javier; Gil‐Lopez, Sergio; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; IAMost scenarios emerging from the Industry 4.0 paradigm rely on the concept of cyber-physical production systems (CPPS), which allow them to synergistically connect physical to digital setups so as to integrate them over all stages of product development. Unfortunately, endowing CPPS with AI-based functionalities poses its own challenges: although advances in the performance of AI models keep blossoming in the community, their penetration in real-world industrial solutions has not so far developed at the same pace. Currently, 90% of AI-based models never reach production due to a manifold of assorted reasons not only related to complexity and performance: decisions issued by AI-based systems must be explained, understood and trusted by their end users. This study elaborates on a novel tool designed to characterize, in a non-supervised, human-understandable fashion, the nominal performance of a factory in terms of production and energy consumption. The traceability and analysis of energy consumption data traces and the monitoring of the factory's production permit to detect anomalies and inefficiencies in the working regime of the overall factory. By virtue of the transparency of the detection process, the proposed approach elicits understandable information about the root cause from the perspective of the production line, process and/or machine that generates the identified inefficiency. This methodology allows for the identification of the machines and/or processes that cause energy inefficiencies in the manufacturing system, and enables significant energy consumption savings by acting on these elements. We assess the performance of our designed method over a real-world case study from the automotive sector, comparing it to an extensive benchmark comprising state-of-the-art unsupervised and semi-supervised anomaly detection algorithms, from classical algorithms to modern generative neural counterparts. The superior quantitative results attained by our proposal complements its better interpretability with respect to the rest of algorithms in the comparison, which emphasizes the utmost relevance of considering the available domain knowledge and the target audience when design AI-based industrial solutions of practical value. Finally, the work described in this paper has been successfully deployed on a large scale in several industrial factories with significant international projection.Item Parametric assessment of a building active façade by means of a combined metallic sandwich panel with an unglazed solar collector(EDP Sciences, 2019-09) Elguezabal, Peru; Lopez, Alex; Blanco, Jesús María; Chica, José AntonioThe building sector has a poor performance in terms of energy efficiency and is looking for alternatives to reduce the use of fossil fuels on building use stage. Renewables are unlimited and solar thermal energy is a technology with a demonstrated potential. The façade is a key element able to harness renewable energy coming from the sun becoming in an Active Solar Thermal Façade (ASTF). The main purpose of this study is the development of a parametric study using a numerical model to analyze the behavior of an unglazed solar collector. Thus, evaluating different design and meteorological parameters to show their influence on the heat transfer and the efficiency. The study shows that solar irradiation and mass flow are the most influential on thermal difference. However, for the efficiency ambient temperature and inlet temperature both are the most influencing ones. In brief, a set of parameters have a significant influence on the behavior of the ASTF that are fully governed by environmental conditions. Nevertheless, there are some other parameters that can be controlled during the operation. The challenge is to make a continuous configuration of this adaptable values depending on the external situation to achieve a higher performance for the ASTF.Item Plotting a path to reduce the energy performance gap(2019-04-08) de Agustin-Camacho, Pablo; Romero-Amorrortu, Ander; Kowalska, Agnieszka; Tecnalia Research & InnovationImproving energy efficiency performance in buildings is a major priority for the European Commission, with a target of achieving 20 percent energy savings by 2020. The EU promotes solutions which reduce energy consumption in the building sector to achieve this, an area which forms the primary research focus for the MOEEBIUS projectItem Políticas e instrumentos de fomento de la rehabilitación energética en francia y alemania(2021) García-Madruga, Carolina; Molina-Costa, Patricia; LABORATORIO DE TRANSFORMACIÓN URBANA; GENERALEl objetivo del artículo es analizar las políticas de apoyo a la rehabilitación energética de viviendas en Francia y Alemania, dos de los países europeos con mayores tasas de renovación. Para ello se analizan los documentos oficiales de la administración central de ambos países, acudiendo a los boletines oficiales y a fuentes primarias de los distintos ministerios o de otros agentes involucra-dos en el desarrollo y ejecución de las diferentes estrategias sectoriales (energía, vivienda, cambio climático, bienestar social, etc.) que afectan a la política de rehabilitación. Para ambos casos de estu-dio se incluyen los siguientes ámbitos de análisis: visión global de las políticas de rehabilitación en cada país, instrumentos de financiación, mecanismos para la movilización de agentes y para la activa-ción de la demanda, e identificación de elementos replicables en el contexto españolItem RELaTED, An Approach to a decentralized Ultra Low Temperature District Heating(2019) Garay, Roberto; Lumbreras, Mikel; Sánchez Zabala, Víctor; Tecnalia Research & InnovationTrends for heating energy in European Cities are the decarbonization of energy sources and the reduction of heat loads. District heating (DH) networks are key systems to reach the targets due to the cost competitiveness and high performance levels they show. However, DH networks require a conversion to adapt for the need of the future. It is necessary to reduce the operation temperature so that it is possible to increase the performance of renewable systems and operation criteria needs to be adopted for the introduction of weather-dependent, distributed heat sources such as solar systems. In this paper is presented the RELaTED, a novel DH networks scheme with decentralized Ultra-Low Temperature performance. This way, it is possible the adaptation of new and existing networks to several operational schemes. Transitory phases for the conversion of actual DH and how this affects the whole system are discussed along the paper.Item Smart Building: The Tecnalia KUBIK Use Case: The Tecnalia KUBIK Use Case(NOW The Essence of Knowledge, 2021-07) Noyé, Sarah; Aranburu, Larraitz; Puente, Sheila; Mulero, Rubén; Antón, Miguel Ángel; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; DIGITALIZACIÓN Y AUTOMATIZACIÓN DE LA CONSTRUCCIÓNBuildings have long been equipped with sensors and actuators to automate their control. Smart buildings are those whose facilities and systems (air condition ing, heating, lighting, access control systems, etc.) allow integrated and automated building management and control to increase energy efficiency, security, and usabil ity. With the democratization of the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors and actuators is constantly increasing, giving ways to new applications. The reduc tion of sensors and actuators cost is driving a digital shift in the building sector.Item Towards Sustainable and Smart Cities: Replicable and KPI-Driven Evaluation Framework: Replicable and KPI-Driven Evaluation Framework(2022-02-17) Quijano, Ana; Hernández, Jose L.; Nouaille, Pierre; Virtanen, Mikko; Sánchez-Sarachu, Beatriz; Pardo-Bosch, Francesc; Knieilng, Jörg; Tecnalia Research & Innovation; PLANIFICACIÓN ENERGÉTICASustainability is pivotal in the urban transformation strategy in order to reach more resource-efficient, resilient and smarter cities. The goal of being a sustainable city should drive the decisions for city interventions, and measuring city progress is a key step for this process. There are many initiatives aiming at defining indicators and assessment procedures, but there is no convergence in the definition of terms and application methodologies, making their real implementation complex. Within mySMARTLife project (GA#731297), a KPI-driven evaluation framework has been defined with the aim of covering the multiple pillars of a smart and sustainable city (i.e., environment, energy, mobility, ICT, citizens, economy, governance) in a holistic way. This methodology also defines the concepts and terms to guide urban planners and/or experts at the time of implementing the framework for any specific city. The evaluation framework has been deployed in the cities of Nantes, Hamburg and Helsinki, and some lessons have been learned, such as the necessity of providing a definition of measurement boundary to avoid biased interpretations. Due to a co-creation strategy, the main issues from the cities have been taken into consideration in order to increase the replicability of the results.