MOEEBIUS ENERGY PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK IN BUILDINGS FOR URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

With the increasing demand for more energy efficient buildings, the construction and energy services industries are faced with the challenge to ensure that the energy performance and savings predicted during energy efficiency measures definition is actually achieved during operation. There is, however, significant evidence to suggest that buildings underperform illustrating a, so called, “performance gap” which is attributed to a variety of causal factors related to both predicted and in-use performance, implying that predictions tend to be unrealistically low whilst actual energy performance is usually unnecessarily high. In turn the successful penetration and effective application of ESCO business models relies on minimizing the gap between actual and predicted building energy performance. The aforementioned gap, though, prohibit the scaled deployment of energy efficiency projects constituting a significant barrier to the development of the ESCO market. The overall problem (performance gap) could be basically interpreted as an inability of current modelling techniques to represent the realistic use and operation of buildings. MOEEBIUS H2020 project introduces a Holistic Energy Performance Optimization Framework that enhances current (passive and active building elements) modelling approaches with advanced user behaviour modelling and machine learning technologies to create an innovative suite of end-user tools and applications enabling: (i) accurate Building Energy Performance prediction, (ii) precise allocation of detailed performance contributions between critical building components and operations, (iii) real-time building performance optimization, (iv) optimized retrofitting decision-making and, (v) real-time peak-load management optimization at the district level. Through the provision of a robust technological framework MOEEBIUS will enable the creation of attractive business opportunities for ESCOs, Aggregators, Maintenance and Facility Managers in evolving and highly competitive energy services markets.