How the comfort requirements can be used to assess and design low energy buildings: testing the EN 15251 comfort evaluation procedure in 4 buildings

Panel: 6. Innovations in buildings and appliances

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Paolo Zangheri, Politecnico di Milano -Energy Department, end-use Efficiency Research Group, Italy
Lorenzo Pagliano, Dipartimento di Energia - Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Roberto Armani, Dipartimento di Energia - Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Abstract

In the last years, one of the primary objectives of a building (that of offering a comfortable environment for human occupation) has been more explicitly defined and brought to the centre of design, construction, operation and evaluation of buildings by a number of co-evolving elements. These might be listed as the wider availability of laboratory-grade measurement instruments for monitoring in the field, the growing number of comfort monitoring and survey data, the continuing research efforts on the subject and the connected evolution of international standards related to comfort.

An important aim of the new Standard EN 15251 is to specify the indoor environmental parameters which have an impact on the energy performance of buildings and different categories of criteria for the assessment of the indoor environment.

As part of the IEE Commoncense Project, we analysed (with detailed measurement campaigns and interviews) 4 existing buildings in Italy to assess their level of thermal comfort. The methodology proposed by the standard EN 15251 was tested to identify its critical issues and to investigate the possibility of its application on a large scale.

Starting from these data and critical evaluation, we analise:

- the possible implications of these comfort targets on the design of low/zero-energy buildings and on the renovation of the existing building stock (within the IEA Task 40-Annex 52 we are providing analysis on how comfort categories defined in EN15251 and other international standards can influence the definition and design methodology of Net Zero Energy Buildings);

- the relationship between comfort evaluation and energy certification.