EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Innovative Renewable Technology Integration for Nearly Zero-Energy Buildings within the Re-COGNITION Project

Giulia Mancò, Elisa Guelpa, Alessandro Colangelo, Alessandro Virtuani, Tommaso Morbiato and Vittorio Verda
Additional contact information
Giulia Mancò: Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
Elisa Guelpa: Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
Alessandro Colangelo: Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
Alessandro Virtuani: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Tommaso Morbiato: WindCity Srl, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
Vittorio Verda: Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-24

Abstract: With the 2010/31/EU directive, all new buildings shall be nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) from 2020 onward, with the aim of strongly reducing the energy consumption related to the building sector. To achieve this goal, it is not sufficient to focus on the design of the building envelope; smart and efficient energy management is necessary. Moreover, to ensure the adoption of RES systems in the built environment, innovative technologies need to be further developed in order to increase their cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency and integration capability. This paper proposes a synthesis, design and operation optimization of an integrated multi-energy system composed of traditional and innovative renewable technologies, developed within the European project Re-COGNITION. A biogas-based micro cogeneration unit, lightweight glass-free photovoltaic modules, a passive variable geometry small wind turbine optimized for an urban environment and latent heat thermal storage based on phase change materials are some of the technologies developed within the Re-COGNITION project. The optimization problem is solved to contemporarily evaluate (a) the optimal design and (b) the optimal operations of the set of technologies considering both investment and operating costs, using mixed integer non-linear programming. The optimization is applied to the four pilots that are developed during the project, in various European cities (Turin (Italy), Corby (United Kingdom), Thessaloniki (Greece), Cluj-Napoca (Romania). Simulation results show that the development and optimal exploitation of new technologies through optimization strategies provide significant benefits in terms of cost (between 11% and 42%) and emissions (between 10% and 25%), managing building import/export energy and charge/discharge storage cycles.

Keywords: multi-energy system; MINLP; mixed integer nonlinear; optimization; energy systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1938/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1938/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1938-:d:497626

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1938-:d:497626