Foreword
The indoor microclimate conditions of professional and residential buildings are closely related to the well-being of European citizens and workers.
However, ensuring high energy performance while at the same time providing healthy and comfortable microclimatic conditions at the mainstream level in Europe is challenging because of the considerable variability in current building types and conditions.
Ensuring optimal housing conditions in compliance with what are the stringent regulations and requirements regarding environmental protection is now a European priority that has led to the birth of the PRELUDE project, an advanced initiative for proactive building optimization, funded by the EU and developed by a pool of dynamic and innovative universities and companies of which La SIA SpA is a member.
Objectives of the PRELUDE project
The main objectives of the PRELUDE project are 3:
1. Ensure well-being, comfort and a good quality of life for European citizens and enable them to generate savings and environmental sustainability regardless of their income level.
2. Supporting property owners and energy suppliers in evaluating investments in renovations and renewable energy, thereby increasing property values and enabling new business relationships with energy users.
3. Enable national and European public entities to improve the level of prosperity of their citizens, center energy and environmental sustainability goals, and ensure energy security.
Impact of the PRELUDE project
The PRELUDE project aims to have a positive impact on the quality of life of European citizens and the environment. This impact consists mainly of the following points:
– Reduction of at least 20% in building maintenance costs through maintenance that keeps buildings in top condition at all times
– Substantial reduction in building energy consumption through the use of dynamic models, big data analysis, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence
– Improvement of indoor environmental quality
– Replicability on a large scale with the goal of achieving energy optimization of about 5.5 million sq m of indoor space by 2027
– Optimizing the use of renewable energy sources in buildings and encouraging citizens to invest in these energy sources
Innovation introduced by the PRELUDE project.
The goals of the PRELUDE project are ambitious, and their potential impact will be of paramount importance for the quality of life of European citizens and the protection of the environment.
The project partners have therefore deployed substantial human, technological and technical resources to generate innovation and ensure the achievement of these goals.
More specifically, the main innovative elements employed in the prelude project are as follows:
– Decision support systems with multiple modular simulation capabilities
– Predictive control models (MPC) for proactive building optimization
–
Predictive maintenance
for residential buildings
– A smart approach to building assessment and renovation
– Building optimization through the use of the Free Running model
– The use of natural ventilation and passive cooling
– The use of multifunctional fiber optic sensors.
La SIA SpA’s role in the PRELUDE project.
LA SIA within the PRELUDE project is in charge of the Predictive Maintenance module. The main objective is to predict and diagnose possible faults for different types of systems, particularly HVAC and photovoltaic systems.
Through the design, development and subsequent verification of algorithms, which analyze data from the entire building envelope, it is possible to increase the operational efficiency of systems, reduce costs and the need for maintenance work. By monitoring system performance, it is possible to predict and estimate the occurrence of failures and optimize the frequency of maintenance, the supply chain of spare parts, and the scheduling of plant life.
Algorithms developed by LA SIA correlate plant monitoring data, such as performance, consumption, etc. (monitored at high frequency and resolution), with data from the data sheets of individual systems; These data are cross-referenced with anomalies/malicious events identified by the user, who will then be able to make his or her own contribution to the efficiency improvement process.
The algorithms are designed to adapt to different building types with varying degrees of technological smartness, from those with basic technologies to state-of-the-art buildings such as the Energetikum Living Lab, or the high-tech building-laboratory where the entire Prelude project is tested and verified.
Article written in collaboration with
Rosaria Aversa
