News

The RES4BUILD project started in 2019 with the aim to decarbonise the energy consumption in buildings by developing integrated renewable-energy-based solutions. Using onsite renewable energy with decarbonised grid electricity, the RES4BUILD integrated energy system incorporates heat pump and combined Solar Photovoltaic-Thermal (PV/T) technologies with thermal energy storage and smart Building Energy Management System (BEMS) to produce low to zero carbon heating and cooling for buildings. This work is particularly relevant today, because while decarbonisation has been the main objective, decoupling from fossil fuels contributes to security of supply, while using on-site generated electricity contributes to affordability and decouples the heating/cooling costs from heavily fluctuating market prices.

Consortium partners VITO-Energyville and Demokritos are modelling the behaviour of the various RES4BUILD system components – heat pumps, solar panel yields, long- and short-term heat storage, and the building thermal mass. One of the ways to model a building’s thermal mass is to estimate the indoor temperature given the ambient conditions and the inputs i.e. outdoor temperature, solar irradiance incident, heating/cooling. The project’s approach uses grey box models to approximate the building model by grouping various physical components together, and then identifying the parameters corresponding to the grouped components in a data driven way. They capture the thermodynamics to a certain extent but are also easily applied across buildings because of this data driven approach. Once ready, the models of the various components can be used in a framework for optimal control of the system to maximize self-consumption or minimize use of fossil fuels and costs.

The 23rd issue of the TightVent newsletter is now available!

Athens has developed a ‘Façade’ (Πρόσοψη) programme to renovate the facades of the buildings. The main difference of this programme compared to others in the EU is that the city is offering homeowners 100% of the funds required to do the work – to a maximum of 6,000 euros per building and even more for protected buildings.

The REVEAL project has been featured in the Renew Economy online magazine in an article "Can aluminium be used as ultra long term storage for renewable energy and heat?" by Joshua S Hill. 

A Catalan architect has realised the first blackened timber facade in Spain. The decision on the material to use has been very important in order to be sustainable, respect the building´s life cycle and to make the building near-zero energy.

POWERSKIN+ Project partners have participated in TECH@WEEKS, K-Messe, Foam Expo Europe and shares some of the outcomes with Build Up audience. 

The PLURAL project successfully performed fire testing of the innovative smart window with heat harvesting capacity at the NTUA premises. 

What technical characteristics must buildings have in order to comply with the Paris Agreements and move towards carbon neutrality by 2050? This is the question that the French Institute for Building Performance (IFPEB) wanted to answer in a new publication available online, the outlines of which we define here.

On Wednesday, November 9, 2022, a report by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC) pointed to a worrying post-Covid trend for the construction industry: the sector's CO2 emissions increased last year, to surpass their pre-pandemic level.