NEWSLETTER

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NEwSlETTER

#2

JUNE 2012
afterproject .eu

THE PROJECT
Buildings account for around 40% of EU energy requirements. In the last five years, Social Housing Organizations have played an exemplary role in improving the energy efficiency of the housing sector. They have anticipated forthcoming national legislation and have punctually experimented with the construction of low-energy buildings and innovative energy refurbishment. AFTER aims to promote and continue this effort especially in light of the obstacles and challenges presented by the current economic situation. The AFTER project aims to enable participating and non-participating Social Housing Institutions and Organizations all over Europe to improve the energy efficiency of their housing stock with cost optimal solutions. Its goal is to promote and develop existing European knowledge in the areas of energy saving strategies and encourage their implementation by companies in the housing sector. Social Housing Organizations in 6 different countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and Slovenia) and their partners -including National Housing Associations, Scientific Committee and National Tenants Associations- are cooperating to highlight and evaluate the most efficient and adaptable energy saving measures. AFTER asserts the importance of establishing energy efficiency as a major goal even after construction of the building. The project promotes measures adapted to a variety of investments and situations. A special emphasis is placed on the important contributions of operation maintenance and management in the energy performance of buildings. AFTER will participate directly to this effort in improving energy efficiency by 20% according to the target set for 2020 by the European Commission.

SUMMARY
AFTER Presentation .............................. p.1 AFTER ESMs .......................................... p.2 Partners Interviews ............................... p.4 Review of Current works ..................... p.6 AFTER News and Events ...................... p.7 Dissemination/EU News ....................... p.8 Partners ................................................... p.9

PILOT ESMS IDENTIFICATION

18 Pilot Energy Saving Measures (ESMs) have been identify by AFTER Social Housing Organizations. These ESMs give an overview on different interventions able to enhance the energy performance of the housing stock. The selected ESMs have been validated by scientific partners of the project, their relevancy is linked with the fact that the selection cover a good diversity of actions on different management and maintenance aspects of the buildings.

DENMARK

1
Tenant information in a passive house the Tenants are expected to have an energy-friendly behaviour.

2
Ventilation: Balanced mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, by-pass function and a heating coil.

3
PazenFensterTechnik: Triple glazing,composite profiles. Wood construction: 450-500 mm insulation ; Double flow ventilation system. Two dwellings share one system.

GERMANY

1
Heating system (without DHW) with a central boiler from 1982 changed with a new gas calorific value boiler ad adaptation of the performance.

2
Global Refurbishment with ventilation system with heat recovery.

3
New Construction in Passive House Standard.

CZECH REP.

1
Remote reading of heating energy and water consumption in individual apartments and visualization of data to tenants on web portal.

2
Regulation of pressure in the heating system. 149 valves out of 243 replaced.

3
Global refurbishment of the building (external insulation, exchange of windows, new lifts, light sensors in common spaces).

SlOVENIA

1
Different types of valves and pressure regulators installed on heating systems flow lines, valves on radiators replaced with thermostatic valves, system balanced and regulated.

2
Recently refurbished building optimized with best practices display in lobby.

3
Low energy building with tenant handbook on how to effectively use heating, ventilation etc.

FRANCE

1
New energy contract with performance objective and profit-sharing system with the operator.

2
District Heating Season with a new energy mix (substitution of a 100% gas system with a combined system 78% wood - 22% gas).

3
Refurbishment 3 years ago.+ ventilation system : Hybrid Ventilation with a control humidity measure to regulate the natural ventilation process.

ITAlY

1
Periodic controls of boiler fume, heating system and exchanger cleaning, pumps and valves control.

2
Substitution of the two old twin boilers (Brand: Ferroli, Model: Linea II, power: 98 kW each) with one new Condensing boiler (model: YGNIS VARFREE 100, power: 92 kW).

3
Insulated coat of 80mm was applied to an existing building of 1960s. Existing single glazing were substituted with high performance double glazing.

AARHUS

DARMSTADT HAVIROV

ClERMONT-FERRAND TORINO

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OPERATING MANAGEMENT RUNNING MAINTENANCE REPlACEMENT OF SYSTEMS RECENTlY REFURBISHED BUIlDINGS RECENT lOw ENERGY BUIlDING

INTERVIEW WITH AFTER SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR

Interview with Elsebeth Terkelsen, architect MAA, special consultant at the Aarhus School of Architecture (AAA) and coordinator of the scientific work in AFTER. This interview allows us to have a special feedback on the scientific methodological process that has been achieved during the project.

what is, according to your opinion, the general approach of the AFTER Project ?
For the architects, the energy performance of buildings has become an important part of designing a new building or renovating an existing building. The architect work with the orientation of the building, the building envelope, building materials, form and function. The life of a building AFTER it is designed should also be an important focus area in the design process. But it is often forgotten. Architects need to be addressed and made aware of their responsibility of including e.g. design of boiler rooms, technical installations, accessibility of the technical installations, position of meters etc in retrofitting and new building projects. Designers and architects should become much more aware and acquainted with the technologies for operation and maintenance in order to develop retrofitting and low energy buildings in our future society. This is one of the main reasons, why the Aarhus School of Architecture have engaged in the AFTER project.

are to be optimized. AFTER focus on the synergy between the two elements and the extra gains that can be achieved. From a scientific point of view it is very interesting to develop methods and tools to reveal the operational problems and problems with operation and maintenance - to improve the energy performance of the building. In other words: Listen to the buildings! In the AFTER project we have an extraordinary opportunity to analyse, optimize and test, how the buildings can function better. The methodological framework of the project has been developed in cooperation between the scientific partners in the project and in a running dialogue with the social housing organisations and associations, and the tenants organisations. The project has inspiration from USA concerning two central elements in the methodological framework of the project:

Can you give us more information regarding the Retro Commissioning and Evaluation, Verification and Measurement concepts within the AFTER Project ?
The retro commissioning (RCx) is defined as the systematic process for improving an existing buildings performance by identifying and implementing relatively low cost operational and maintenance improvements, helping to

what is the interest of the scientific part of the project ?

For reaching the 2020 goals of energy saving, the building design and the building performance

ensure that the buildings performance meets owner expectations. Retro commissioning is intended to be an equivalent of commissioning for existing buildings as its main objective is to understand how building equipment and systems function in order to enhance a buildings overall performance. (California Commissioning guide: Existing buildings. California Commisssioning Collaborative, 2006 ) The RCx focuses on offices and industry buildings. In the AFTER project, we focus on the social housing sector, and the conditions in this sector. The results so far show that important elements in RCx and in revealing the problems in the buildings are Registration of the energy use - big variations over the year(s) show, if action is needed. It might be technical or dependant on tenants behaviour or awareness. Registration of tenants complaints can indicate that there are some technical problems in the building that need to be solved. Interview with the caretaker might reveal bigger problems in the building. A structured method with questions and documentation - like the RCx - helps the process. The methods for evaluating, measuring and verifying the pilot sites in the project are developed also with the background of American experiences. AFTER uses the IPMVP (International Performance and Measurement Verification Protocol) as common basis to elaborate its own testing

protocol. IPMVP has been launched in 1995 by the US Department of Energy (North American Energy Measurement and Verification Protocol). Its aim was to provide a general tool to quantify and assess energy savings created by ESCOs (Energy Saving Companies). The IPMVP has been adapted to the AFTER Project in a Common Evaluation Protocol, focussing on the following themes Management Operation & maintenance System exchange Retrofitting Low Energy Buildings This Common Evaluation Protocol follows the general structure of the IPMVP, simplifying some of its aspects. Its main objective is to illustrate a process of assessment that will be adapted regarding specificities of every type of intervention on the housing stock.

what methodological tools have been created during the process ?

The AFTER project has created the following tools: 1. Inventory - organization of the first registration of the energy performance and economy of the possible pilot sites and relevant Energy Saving Measures (ESMs) 2. Handbook - a common platform with definitions of the different elements in the Inventory

3. Typology - a categorization of the different types of ESMs, registered in the Inventory 4. Fact sheets - describing the first selection of ESMs concerning techniques, use, economy and ideas for optimization 5. Retro commissioning - pilot site building check and background for preparing the evaluation of the ESMs at the pilot sites 6. Common Evaluation Protocol - a notebook collecting the different data and results necessary to evaluate the energy performance, the economical performance and the social performance of the ESMs, how to measure, by what means (meters), baseline and reporting periods.

A special task is the social awareness theme in the project. We address some general elements that can be measures, such as vacancy rate and turnover rate. But its important also to look at tenants behaviour and tenants awareness. For this reason the AFTER project has developed a questionnaire to either do interviews or to give to the tenants to fill in. The tenants organisations have been an important and experienced contributor in this part of the development of the methodology.

what difficuties have been overcome ?

In an innovative project with a large number of partners from many different countries, there will always be difficulties. We have been able to develop an organization that functions, although we meet rather seldom. We have overcome scientific problems - like how to calculate the areas - through several loops of discussions and proposals. We have - although we disagreed quite a lot about the process due to both cultural and methodological different approaches - managed to proceed.

How does the team worked during this process ?

The team in the AFTER project consists of scientific partners, SHOs, national housing associations and tenants organizations. The scientific partners have been responsible for the developing of the methodological framework of the project. But as the developed methods and tools must be operational and understandable for the users - the SHOs, who are the main target group of the AFTER project, it has been very important and very valuable during the development process to have a dialogue between the scientific partners and the SHOs in the project.

REVIEW OF CURRENT WORK

AFTER project is based on a several steps approach. Before the summer and the beginning of the heating season, AFTER partners mainly focused on the validation of the scientific documents and the identification of relevant Pilot ESMs and Pilot Sites to implement optimization solutions.

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Data collection

Factsheets

Pilot Sites

Retro-Commissioning

Typologies

Handbook

Pilot Measures Evaluation Protocol

Scientific documents
The Scientific partners of the project have achieved two important steps regarding the methodology of the project and especially its implementation phase. Two documents are the main tools proposed to the SHOs: - the Retro-commissioning (RCx) Investigation Plan which develop this concept and propose an operationnal process to social housing companies in order to assess the existing performance of their buildings and to propose optimization solutions to improve their efficiency. - the Common Evaluation Protocol (CEP) which propose a general framework to assess Energy Saving Measures implemented on Pilot Sites. This CEP both presents a process and a tool to collect data according to the characteristics of each ESMs from the several Work Packages included in the AFTER project.

Pilot ESMs identification

Pilot Energy Saving Measures (ESMs) have been identified by the participating partners. These ESMs highlight priority topics in order to improve the energy efficiency of the social housing stock focusing on management and maintenance aspects. The ESMs testing will follows the enclosed time line. The main objective is to identify relevant optimization solutions in order to see how the existing experiments can be improved in order to obtain optimized standard ESMs.

Time line
ESM IMPLEMENTATION
before after RCx implementation

OPTIMIZED ESM
testing phase

OPTIMIZATION FINDING AND IMPLEMENTATION

NEWS AND DISSEMINATION EVENTS

AFTER ouputs have been presented and discussed thanks to several interventions directed toward a professional public. Overview of our dissemination activities.

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Project Meeting #3
Darmstadt, Germany - 21st & 22nd of March 2012 Partners of the European project AFTER met in Darmstadt on the 21 and 22 of March. The Darmstadt meeting took place at a crucial moment of the project, its main stake was to end the phases of inventory, analysis and assessment of the ESM ( WP3.WP4,WP5,WP6,WP7) and to prepare the phase of selection and optimization of the pilot E.S.M.

DOM 2012: International fair of offers for the home

ljubljana, Slovenia 9th of March 2012 Number of participants: 10 in the AFTER workshop and 55.000 in the fair Type of participants: Building professionals, Architects, Engineers This international fair is a showcase of key solutions for economical, safe and sustainable building and for this edition there were visitors in 6 days. A workshop of AFTER project was held in the frame of the independent energy advisory events organized for the visitors of the fair.

Italian National meeting

Turin, Italy 14th of February 2012 Number of participants: 14 Type of participants: representatives from federation of industry for building sector, from federation of workers in building sector, from research institutes and from tenants unions This meeting took place in the ATC office specifically in order to show to the present stakeholders the contents of the project, especially the topic of the energy saving measures and the mission of the National Advisory Board.

Coming events

Turin, Italy 22nd & 23rd November 2012

Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 244/2012 of 16 January 2012:

supplementing Directive 2010/31/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on the energy performance of buildings by establishing a comparative methodology framework for calculating cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements for buildings and building elements was officially published on the 21 March, 2012. The methodology framework specifies rules for comparing energy efficiency measures, measures incorporating renewable energy sources and packages and variants of such measures, based on the primary energy performance and the cost attributed to their implementation. It also lays down how to apply these rules to selected reference buildings with the aim of identifying cost-optimal levels of minimum energy performance requirements. In order to apply this Regulation member States shall report to the Commission all input data and assumptions used for the calculations and the results of those calculations. It shall apply from 9 January 2013 to buildings occupied by public authorities and from 9 July 2013 to other buildings except for new buildings which shall enter into force on 30 June 2012.

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CECODHAS Housing Europe General Assembly

lyon, France. 27-28-29 June 2012 Number of participants: 20 Type of participants: representatives of national housing associations that are European members of Cecodhas housing Europe. Ms Anna Pozzo made a general presentation of AFTER project to participants at the meeting. She explained the objectives, the approach and the action of the project. There was a lot of interest in Energy Saving Measures inventory as the start point to improve the management of the housing stock.

FACTS AND FIGURES

* Started on May 2011 for a duration of 3 years. * 2,7M budget granted for 75 % by the European Commission. * 18 partners and 6 Social national housing organisations managing 103 000 housing units. * 200 professionals participating in 3 National workshops and final seminars * 3 pre-tested standard energy saving measures per country targeting an immediate energy reduction of 3 to 7,5%. * 3 pilot sites per country to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of well-developed energy saving measures. * Promoting low-cost innovations: under 500 EUR/housing unit.

COORDINATION AND CONTACT

PROJECT MANAGEMENT Julien Bonnet bonnet@delphis-asso.org c/o DELPHIS 33, rue Saint-Augustin PARIS, France www. http://www.delphis-asso.org/ Tel. : + 33 (0)1 56 08 54 2375002 Fax : + 33 (0)1 56 08 01 09

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