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Closed for application
C39.CU3.11

Monitoring and modelling of a ZEB (Zero Energy Building)

  • Reference person
    Michele
    De Carli
    michele.decarli@unipd.it
  • Host University/Institute
    University of Padua
  • Internship
    N
  • Research Keywords
    Zero Energy Buildings and Positive Energy Houses
    Building envelope, HVAC and RES technologies
    Living lab
  • Reference ERCs
    PE8_6 Energy processes engineering
    0
    0
  • Reference SDGs
    GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
    GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
    GOAL 13: Climate Action
  • Studente
  • Co-Supervisor

Description

Residential buildings are responsible of about 26% of CO2 emissions in Europe. The target of zero emissions in 2050 requires to test solutions and systems for the envelope, for the HVAC systems and integrated RES, looking at Zero and Positive Energy Buildings.For this purpose, a laboratory of Zero Energy Buildings (UniZEB) is almost finished in the University of Padua. The building is equipped with innovative technologies for the envelope and the HVAC systems, with a novel BMS (Building Management System). The doctorate activity will start when the panel of occupants is going to enter in the building. The monitoring activity will include a heating and a cooling season. The Ph.D student will have to analyze first the building envelope measurements and has to develop different models for each component: a well insulated vertical wall, a ventilated wall, three types of roofs and the ventilated basement. Once tuned the models against the measurements, the technologies will be simulated in other conditions. Once finished this activity the Ph.D student has to integrate the models in an overall building model including the envelope and the HVAC system. The new model will be used as digital twin to better understand the energy and comfort measurements, considering innovative strategies to manage the building and the HVAC plant.The research activity will be carried out together with KTH of Stockholm, having already established a joint activity on living labs and digital twins.

Suggested skills:

The candidate should have a degree in Energy Engineering or Mechanical Engineering. He/she should have had experience in the master thesis and/or after the master thesis in research groups dealing with energy in buildings.The candidate should have backgrounds on building dynamic energy models, and should have good knowledge on commercial tools for the building energy dynamic simulations (at least one, but better if more than one among ENERGYPLUS, TRNSYS and IDA ICE). The candidate should also be familiar with sensitivity analyses on energy models, control of HVAC systems and building energy analyses. The candidate should have backgrounds on simulation and modelling with MATLAB tool.

Research team and environment

BETALAB (Building Energy & Technology Assessment Research) group (https://research.dii.unipd.it/betalab/) is composed by Michele De Carli (Full Professor), two Associate Professors, one Assistant Professor, 5 PhD students, 2 post-doc researchers and 2 research fellows, working on buildings (Indoor Environmental Quality, advanced building envelope solutions, HVAC systems, integrated RES) and communities (UBEMs and district heating and cooling networks). In the last 15 years BETALAB worked on 60 researches for companies and public bodies, on 12 Regional projects and on 6 EU projects. The joint activity involves many national and international companies/universities/research centers.