Risk-Conscious Building Energy Retrofits

• Activity Number: 577
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Author(s): Godfried L. Augenbroe*+
• Companies: Georgia Institute of Technology
• Keywords: building ; energy ; sustainability

Abstract

The paper gives an overview of research conducted during the first three years under the NSF-EFRI-SEED grant "Risk-conscious design and retrofit of buildings for low energy". The research starts from the premise that current assessment of building performance is predominantly based on deterministic methods, which has led to a building stock that in many instances does not meet its predicted performance. The ongoing research re-focuses our thinking about green building commissioning, performance contracting, auditing and operation practices with the aim to guarantee a better performing building stock. The paper shows how the uncertainty quantification of input and model parameters can be accomplished for current building energy models. We discuss how the approach supports risk conscious selection of retrofit options in the current building stock when the target is to combine the maximum energy saving target with making the best retrofit investments in the light of uncertainties in performance, revenue and execution cost predictions. An implementation is shown for a facade retrofit in an apartment building. We discuss the ramifications for energy auditing and financing.