• Energy Research

The characteristic that describes the extent to which buildings and their systems maintain their performance during shocks is called resilience. Building policies in the EU have already addressed the resilience of buildings against possible hazards (i.e., natural disasters, extreme weathers, fires). However, with increasing overheating risks (e.g., climate change) accompanied by their detrimental health and economic impacts, the thermal per-formance of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) is not guaranteed. This study aims to assess the impact of shocks and combinations on the thermal resilience of educational nZEB against heatwaves (HW) and system shocks (SS) including failure of indirect evaporative cooling (IEC), natural night ventilation (NNV) and solar shading failure (SF). A Modelica model of the building was developed and experimentally validated. Shocks were classified and quantified using the novel normalized degree of shock (doS) index. Heatwaves (HWs) had 20 x to 93 x more critical impact than the worst SS (NNV failure). Additionally SS occurring at the start of the operational period is 1.2 x more critical than SS occurring later in the day as it allowed for significant heat build-up in both class-rooms. In future climate scenarios a combination of HWs and power outages will become frequent. This study showed that a combination of a full day of cooling strategy and shading failure occurring on the hottest day of a 6-day long HW, is 10% more critical on both lecture rooms than an individual 10-day long HW. Classroom with heavy thermal mass prolongs the absorptivity of the shocks but delays recovery.

The webtool for feasibility study and pre-design of hybridGEOTABS buildings (publicly available via www.hybridgeotabs.eu/designtool) relies on the pre-simulation and pre-engineering of almost 150.000 hybridGEOTABS building case-studies throughout the EU. This report documents the pre-engineering methodology, its verification and results. Moreover, sizing guidelines (including design decision trees) are introduced, that are based on the results of all case-studies. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 723649

This report provides a technical description of the hybridGEOTABS case-study and demonstration buildings: Infrax/Fluvius office building (Belgium), Ter Potterie elderly home (Belgium), Libeznice school (Czech Republic), Haus M (Switzerland), Solarwind office building (Luxembourg). The description includes an overview of the building design, the HVAC-design (incl. hydraulic schemes) and the HVAC controllers (RBC and MPC). This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 723649

In this report, the performance of the hybridGEOTABS concept is assessed by quantifying the savings obtained by using hybridGEOTABS combined with Rule Based Controls and Model Predictive Controls, as compared to traditional heating/cooling and control strategies. This quantification is done using dynamic building energy simulations of case‑study buildings in a virtual test‑bed. The energy, cost and environmental performance are assessed. The deliverable documents the methodology, analysis and resulting conclusions of this assessment. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 723649

The dataset consists of the building energy simulation data for three case-study buildings (Infrax office building (BE); Ter Potterie elderly home (BE) and Haus M multi-family building (CH)). For these buildings, HVAC-concepts were simulated: the hybridGEOTABS-MPC concept (not for Haus M), hybridGEOTABS-RBC baseline concept and nonGEOTABS-RBC concept. The dataset includes the hourly time series for a one year simulation for the major outputs of the BES-model. The results are reported in hybridGEOTABS deliverable D4.9. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 723649