Abstract
A low-cost methodology for the thermal performance evaluation of the public school buildings in the Lombardy Region is presented. The main aim of the evaluation is to determine the energy savings with reasonable accuracy and thus the cost-effectiveness of the retrofit measures.Hourly data for weather variables, indoor temperatures and humidity, fuel consumption and heat delivered to the building are collected using an automatic data acquisition system (DAS). The infiltration rate was determined using tracer gas (SF6) technique and the overall conduction heat loss coefficient was determined by the coheating method. Using these measured quantities and hourly data, heat balances are obtained and the effective solar contribution is calculated.The procedure is illustrated with the Montorfano School monitored data for a ten-day period. For the ten-day period reported here, the solar contributions (including passive and active) make up 18% of the total heat load. Suggestions for improvements to enhance these contributions are presented. The auxiliary heating system efficiency during the reported period is approximately 54%. The cause of this low efficiency is discussed. The analyses of the data presented here indicate that the methodology is simple and quite accurate for policy-making purposes. It is hoped that this monitoring methodology, which makes it also possible to evaluate the contributions of the various energy sources, will be adopted as a standard for future monitoring work in the Lombardy Region.
Published Version
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