Benchmarking of energy demand of domestic and small business buildings

Abstract

In Europe the building sector represents 41% of the final energy consumption and the 40% of the total GHG emissions of end-use sectors (Directive 2010/31/EU) [1]. Solar energy is one of the forms of renewable energy that has great potential to enable EU the ambition of 12% of heating coming from renewable sources by 2020 [2]. Within this context, the overall objective of the project Innovative Micro Solar Heat and Power System (Innova MicroSolar) is to develop a high performance and cost effective solar heat and power system, which consist in a novel flat Fresnel mirror solar concentrating collector and micro organic Rankine cycle plant combined with advanced phase change materials as thermal storage, all system managed by smart control units. This technology will be initially implemented in individual dwellings and small business residential buildings for on-site electricity and heat generation using solar thermal energy.

This study has received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº723596 (Innova MicroSolar) and Nº 657466 (INPATHTES), from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) under grant agreement Nº PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE). The work is partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER) and ENE2015- 64117-C5-3-R (MINECO/FEDER)). GREA is certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2014 SGR 123). Alvaro de Gracia would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014-19940.