Smart Buildings: ICT as a driving energy-efficient solution for retrofitting of existing buildings

Sammanfattning: It is widely recognized how energy efficiency can contribute to decreasing GHG emissions, especially in the building sector, where buildings will play an increasingly important role for the future energy system, being both the largest energy consumers and becoming one of the greatest producers of renewable energy. In this new energy context, where renewable sources will be the main supplier for the production of electricity, there will be a growing need for dynamic control as well as intelligent and interconnected systems, which will lead to the creation of a new ICT architecture based on the interaction between Smart Buildings and Smart Grid, where buildings will take the role of proactive participants in the smart electricity network, facilitating the reduction of energy consumption and GHG emissions as well as other societal benefits. However, in order to fully reach the ICT architecture model and at the same time achieving the energy savings targets, the main effort should be pointed towards the existing building stock, since it represents the urban dwelling type with the lowest energy efficiency and therefore it should be upgraded to the extent possible into an energy efficient smart building stock. The aim of the thesis is to identify and analyse the potential energy saving which can be obtained through ICT solutions in an existing Swedish single-family household built during the ‘record years’ (1961-1975), without the need for extensive change or renovation. In a first place, it will be created the building energy model representative of the Swedish residential building stock built between 1961 and 1975. This energy model will be defined according to the European project TABULA and based on secondary data sources. Then, the potential energy saving will be identified through the IDA ICE software, in which it will be analyzed the most energy-efficient combination of smart controls and connected devices to achieve energy performance improvement, under a set of constraints and limitations. Finally, this energy saving, obtained merely through the introduction of ICT technologies, will be complemented with on-site renewable source generation.