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Stefano P. CorgnatiProf., Ph. D.President, Chair of the Awards Committee,
REHVATEBE Research Group, Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, ItalyEmail: stefano.corgnati@polito.it |
How to keep
high comfort and high indoor environmental quality levels by a new design and
operational approach for buildings based on “de-carbonization”: this is our
ambitious target for the next future.
To help us
in this difficult path, the revised Energy Performance of Building Directive
gives interesting messages to be interpreted in order to push the building
performances towards a new era. There is now a clear focus on actual energy
consumption and performances: we must work to reduce the so called “performance
gap”, that is the difference between calculated and actual energy performance.
To do so, we have to better understand the influence of occupants’ behaviour on
building energy consumption, the way which occupants interact with the building
to change comfort and/or consumption levels and how positive actions stimulated
by an energy conscious approach may modify the building energy dynamics. If we
want to increase the capability to interpret users and the “users &
building” complex systems, we need data: the digitalization of the building,
and specifically of the HVAC sector, is a fundamental step. Sensors are in
buildings to measures quantities, to collect and elaborate data, to analyse and
investigate indicators, to give information to the building manager, to give
feedbacks to occupants. Data science is penetrating the building energy sector,
and this is a unique opportunity to create new products and services. The
development of the Smart Readiness Indicator, promoted by the new EPBD to help
the interpretation of the metabolism of such complex organisms like buildings,
is challenging and our HVAC community must take a leading position on this
issue. Building monitoring and data analysis is useful not only to characterize
the building in its individual behaviour, but also to open opportunities of
interaction among buildings as parts of an energy communities. Day by day, we
move our boundaries of energy investigations from single buildings to groups of
connected building, where different energy vectors can be selected to feed the
different energy equipment and to cover the different energy needs of the
users. The transition to an all-electric, digitalized, connected and smart
interacting buildings community is coming, as it is happening to the mobility
sector. Be smart to take this opportunity to push new innovative solutions to our
HVAC sector: the opportunity is there, we must be there too.
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