Working on Buildings’ Energy Performance Upgrade in Mediterranean Climate

Dimitris Al Katsaprakakis,Georgios Zidianakis,Yiannis Yiannakoudakis,Irini Dakanali,Spyros Kanouras,Evaggelos Manioudakis

doi:10.3390/en13092159

Dimitris Al Katsaprakakis, Georgios Zidianakis + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en13092159

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Journal: Energies	Publication Date: May 1, 2020
Citations: 23	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Hellenic Mediterranean University

Abstract

This article aims to present the results from studies on the energy performance upgrade of buildings and facilities located in Crete, Greece, in a typical Mediterranean climate. In Mediterranean islands, the most buildings remain uninsulated, classified in C or even lower energy performance rank. In this article four reference buildings and one sports facility are investigated: a residential building, a municipality building, a school building, a museum and the Pancretan Stadium. Detailed calculations based on the computational simulation of each examined facility were executed, giving accurate results on the heating and cooling loads, both for the existing conditions and after the integration of the proposed passive measures. Thorough dimensioning and energy calculations have been executed for specific active energy systems too, particularly proposed for each examined case. With this parametric approach, the article indicates the effect and the economic efficiency of the proposed active or passive measures for each examined facility, expressed with specific key performance indicators. The common conclusion for all investigated cases is the huge margin for energy saving, which can reach 65% with regard to the existing annual consumptions. The payback period of the introduced energy upgrade measures can be as low as 15 years.

Highlights

For a more integrative picture of the achieved primary energy saving, the results presented in Table 8 are compared with the corresponding primary energy consumptions in the existing operation of the examined buildings, presented in Table 4 (Section 2)
The article proved the huge potential for the energy performance upgrade of buildings and facilities in the Mediterranean region
This potential springs mainly from the inadequate envelope conditions met in the vast majority of the existing building stock in this geographical area, referring to the insulation of the opaque surfaces, the quality of the existing openings, regarding both their thermos-physical properties and airtightness, and the appropriate exploitation of the solar gains, through the effective shading of the transparent surfaces

Summary

Introduction

Mediterranean climate is characterized with mild winters and cool summers, especially as far as the insular territories are concerned. The normal peak daily temperature during summer ranges around 30 ◦ C, due to the cool sea-blowing winds [1,2], apart from some very specific regions, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean basin (Cyprus and Middle East) and the north of Africa. These seasonally fluctuating mild climate conditions result to the configuration of moderate, yet absolutely certain, heating and cooling loads of buildings.

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