Simulazione termo-energetica dinamica di edifici ad elevate prestazioni: procedure di validazione dei modelli, applicazioni progettuali e casi studio.

Dynamic simulation is becoming very important in energy design phases of new buildings, in the energy diagnosis process and in case of continuous-commissioning. In Italy designers do not have to use dynamic simulations for verifying the minimal energy requirements of buildings, but they need to predict energy performance with more detail than what is possible with semi-stationary methods. National standards utilized to evaluate the energy performance of buildings are UNI TS 11300 parts 1, 2, 3 and 4; they use a semi-stationary method with monthly average climate data. In Europe the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/UE (EPBD Recast) introduces dynamic simulation to calculate primary energy for end uses in the context of Net Zero Energy Buildings. This work applies dynamic simulation to energy design of buildings and building monitoring, and focuses on the validity of these methods in evaluating high performance buildings, on the problem of input data availability and on the influence of some parameters in energy modeling. Starting from ANSI/ASHRAE validation tests of dynamic methods, this work suggest a validation procedure of the Design Builder software (in its Conduction Transfer Function package) using the European standard UNI EN 15265. The same standard is also used to evaluate which of the convection algorithms of EnergyPlus best approaches reference results for heating and cooling. The obtained results are used later for the dynamic simulation of high performance buildings case studies. The first case study is a new high energy performance residential building. The first step is an annual free-running monitoring of indoor environmental data; then the building is hourly simulated with a dynamic code and at the end there is an evaluation of the gap between actual and predicted data, and of their correlation when varying some input data of the model. The second case study is an energy design experience of a reconstructed residential building after the earthquake in Emilia Romagna (May 2012). The design process is being developed with the aim of receiving the GBC Home® Italia certification at the end of the construction phase. The work focalizes on the two dynamic simulations required by the protocol: design building and reference building. This procedure allows the collection of points in the category Energy and Atmosphere by demonstrating a percentage improvement in the proposed building performance rating compared with the baseline. The dynamic evaluation concerns all end uses of the building: heating, cooling, hot water production, pumps, lighting and other equipment.