Towards smart buildings. Is the Smart Readiness Indicator an effective tool?

As clearly declared by the European Union (EU) in the framework of the EU climate actions and of the long-term strategies up to 2050, the building sector has an essential role in achieving the advocated energy transition. In order to achieve the energy and emission reductions goals, actions are needed to increase energy savings and efficiency at building and system level, as well as to improve occupants’ wellbeing and satisfaction. To do this, a new multi-disciplinary paradigm is essential, able to tackle all the building-system-occupant challenges and interactions. The objective of the work is to explore different levels of knowledge and detail of a building, in order to better identify its points of strength and weakness, but also to compare the instruments used to measure the buildings performance and the performance itself. In this context, the choice of the case study is essential, and the thesis focused on the complex building of the Energy Center (EC) at Politecnico di Torino. The reason behind the conceptualization of the Energy Center was the idea to create an innovative and stimulating environment able to put in contact several actors of the energy, environmental and political fields. This combination of multi-disciplinary expertise and research areas represents the main objective of the Energy Center, idea that was exploited since its initial building design and construction phase, which represented the result of the application of innovative techniques and of multi-disciplinary researches to guarantee high levels of energy savings, smartness, comfort and innovation. The project was based on the idea to create a multi-energy environment, integrating different energy production systems and resources, among which of course renewable technologies, to be used also for further research. In addition, an advanced monitoring system and control was developed in order to achieve an efficient management of the entire building. Starting from this background, the thesis aimed to study and assess the EC energy behaviour, strengthen on three diverse levels of knowledge, increasingly more detailed and deeper. First, the building was analysed through the calculation of a unique indicator (the Smart Readiness Indicator, SRI), able to synthesize the overall building technological features and readiness to smartness, in terms of capability to easily respond and adapt to both energy systems and occupants’ needs, through the use of a multi-criteria assessment method. Secondly, an analysis based on the real building operation was performed, assessing the building energy behaviour by exploiting the available monitored data, in order to capture possible rooms for improvement to achieve an efficient energy management and control. Finally, the thesis considered the development of an energy-dynamic model, using the EnergyPlus simulation tool; after calibrating the model according to the building project data, through the energy simulations it was possible to explore different scenarios of energy management and control, to evaluate to what extent these actions could have an impact on the overall SRI calculation and assessment. The analysis allowed to deepen and comment on the efficacy of the SRI of being a real tool of building behaviour assessment, able to link the indicator itself with the real energy needs of the building and to understand if and how the indicator is sensible to building energy needs variations.