Abstract
Sustainability certifications like BREEAM, LEED, and China's sustainable green building award certification scheme encourage installation of technologies that save mains water and grid electricity. Among these are rainwater harvesting systems, ultralow water use appliances, photovoltaic panel systems, and intelligent building management systems. In reviewing the performance of two award-winning university buildings over respective periods of sixteen and four years, we found that such systems delivered only 28–71% of their potential resource savings. These performance gaps arose from various technical and social issues (pump failures, tank leakages, poor alignment of demand and supply with limited storage, low photovoltaic panel efficiency, poor user acceptance, etc.), but the consequences were exacerbated by inadequate asset management that resulted in long system downtimes, in some cases for 2–5 years. Repair, maintenance, and upgrading expenses then combined with lower than anticipated water and electricity bill savings that ultimately meant that, for the most part, there was no prospect of earning a return on capital expenditures. Continuous monitoring of building water consumption by an external service provider was the most effective resource and cost saving solution in this study, as it required no capital expenditure, and revealed a 1640 l/h leakage, without putting high demands on the building management. In contrast, little value was obtained from 25 water-related sensors installed as part of a “building-as-a-lab” project because of inadequate post hand-over support. Robust post-commissioning operation should become a key criterion for sustainable building innovation, and this should be reflected in green awards and rating systems.
Highlights
More resource efficient and greener building design is essential for sustainable development
This study aimed to identify what optimization opportunities exist for such sustainable building assets during real-world operations, so that technologies and incentives like green building rating systems can be adapted
The rain water harvesting systems (RWHS) was recommissioned in April 2010, and pro vided on average 424 m3 of rainwater per year for toilet flushing based on a meter reading from July 2014, in very close agreement with the theoretical RWHS potential of 444 m3 per year
Summary
More resource efficient and greener building design is essential for sustainable development. Three sustainable building rating systems, BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environ mental Assessment Method) in the UK, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) in the USA, and government standard GB/T50378-2019 in China, are frameworks for assessing building sus tainability based on aspects of energy and water resources consumption, and other environmental impacts. Most award-winning buildings score high in such ratings by having features for the use of renewable resource like rainwater and solar energy harvesting, resource efficient appliances, and intelligent building systems to optimize performance [6,7]. Most awards are based on the designed (and not real-world performance) of sustainable building features such as rain water harvesting systems (RWHS), photovoltaic panel systems (PVS) and intelligent building management systems (IBMS). It is important to consider how well such systems perform in the longer-term under real-world operations [8]
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