Resumen de Energy savings in energy refurbishment of public rental social housing
Javier Llorente, Beatriz San Martín, Óscar Fernández
Energy refurbishment of buildings represent one of the most relevant energy saving measures in order to achieve the ambitious objectives stablished by the European Commission to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gases, in the battle against global warming. The energy renovation works in public rental social housing is the main objective of the present work, with the aim of to obtain, at the same time, a significant reduction in their energy consumption (NZEB buildings), while improving the indoor comfort of the users themselves. This measure is, without a doubt, one of the best strategies to combat energy poverty. The present work shows the energy savings from different types of energy refurbishments in four different buildings under the framework of SustaiNAVility EU project. Energy efficiency measures such as thicker insulation layers in walls or the renovation of boilers were considered. In order to obtain truthful results of the renovations to be carried out, within these four promotions, monitoring devices were put in place to register indoor air temperature and humidity. Static comfort indicators of indoor comfort such as PPD or PMV were calculated, showing different patterns of user behavior. In addition, the external temperature, humidity and solar radiation data were collected and, together with the energy bills delivered by the tenants of the dwellings to be retrofitted. Two different methods were considered to calculate the energy savings in the buildings. The first method, consists on a calibrated energy simulation, where the indoor comfort conditions are measured, the weather conditions are also registered and the energy consumption of the dwellings is known. Several data loggers were installed in the dwellings so as to register indoor air temperature and humidity. The second method consists in a standard energy simulation based on standard energy consumption profiles and weather conditions from a typical meteorological year. The estimated energy savings in energy refurbishment of public rental social housing using the calibrated simulation are in the range 62%-83%. The simplified method overestimates the energy saving due to the fact that the tenants’ user behavior in social housing differs slightly from the standard one.
