丹尼尔斯大厦 加拿大多伦多

正多伦多大学丹尼尔斯建筑、景观和设计学院的设计采用了分期的方法,包括修复和扩建以前称为"知识学院"的标志性建筑,将现有建筑物改造成与教学和需求更相关的框架体系。这个十九世纪遗址的总体规划是通过对预期用途模式和场地生态的分析而制定的,目的是重新定位校园西南角与安大略湖的轴线,并为学院创造新的特性。丹尼尔斯建筑、景观和设计学院需要一个可持续发展的新型工     

Domestic demand-side response with heat pumps: controls and tariffs

ABSTRACT

Electric heat pumps feature prominently in projected energy transitions in the UK and elsewhere. Owing to their high electricity consumption, heat pumps are viewed as important targets for demand-side response (DSR). Findings are presented from a field trial of a new control system that aims to optimize heat pump performance, including under time-varying tariff conditions. The trial involved monitoring 76 properties with heat pumps, but without dedicated heat storage; 31 of these received the control system. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of 12 participants. The controller successfully evened out electricity demand over the day (reducing the evening peak), but this was associated with increased late night and daytime temperatures. Interview participants reported some disturbance owing to overnight heating and noise, as well as usability issues with the controller interface and hardware. These issues present risks to the future acceptability of such systems. While the system delivered short-term demand reductions successfully, longer-term demand shifting risked causing unacceptable disturbance to occupants. Future control systems could overcome some of the issues identified in this pioneering trial through more effective zoning, using temperature caps or installing dedicated heat storage, but these may either limit the available flexibility or be challenging to achieve.     

Key factors determining the energy rating of existing English houses

In the UK, the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is used to rate the energy performance of existing dwellings whenever they are let or sold. This study investigates which of the inputs to SAP account for the most variance in energy rating across existing gas central heated houses in England. Data from the English Housing Survey (EHS) 2009 are used to generate a representative set of dwellings and variance-based global sensitivity analysis is then applied to assess each input's contribution to the variance in the calculated ratings. It is demonstrated that heating system efficiency, external wall U-value and dwelling geometry account for 75% of the variance of the energy rating of gas central heated houses in England. This suggests that improving heating system efficiencies and wall U-values of the worst performing dwellings will go a long way towards improving their energy rating and potentially reducing their energy consumption. It is also demonstrated that dwelling geometry has a much bigger influence on the calculated carbon emissions (accounting for 80% of the variance) than it does on the SAP energy rating (accounting for 30%), meaning that significant improvements in energy rating might not be accompanied by significant reductions in carbon emissions.     

Uptake of energy efficiency interventions in English dwellings

Little detailed evidence has previously been available regarding the uptake rate or prevalence of energy efficiency interventions among specific household groups. This study uses the Home Energy Efficiency Database (HEED) to investigate both the combination of measures that have been installed, and in which dwellings, according to key neighbourhood socio-demographic variables, including income and tenure. Analysis of 2000–07 data indicates that approximately 40% (9.3 million) dwellings in England had approximately 23.7 million efficiency measures installed, with an average of 2.5 measures per dwelling. Building fabric-related measures were the most frequent (e.g. cavity wall insulation, loft insulation and glazing) with an average of 2.1 million installed each year. Dwellings with the highest number of fabric interventions (the top 20%) were more likely to be found in areas with low income, with more owner-occupied dwellings, experiencing lower winter temperatures, having a lower proportion of flats, and having a slightly higher proportion of older adults and children. Energy efficiency installations have tended to occur among specific types of households or parts of the building stock. These findings have implications for the design of future government programmes for targeting energy efficiency measures to specific household groups or dwelling types.     

Waiting in line [queuing theory]

Queuing phenomenon encompasses all activities of our lives. We have to wait in line whenever the number of servers or the service rate of the server does not match the rate at which the customers arrive in the queue. Queuing theory is the formal analysis of this phenomenon in search of finding the optimum solution to this problem so that everybody gets service without waiting for a long time in line. After giving an introduction to queuing theory, the author discusses real world applications of the theory     

A Hybrid Modular Context-aware Services Adaptation for a Smart Living Room

Smart spaces have attracted considerable amount of interest over the past few years. The introduction of sensor networks, powerful electronics and communication infrastructures have helped a lot in the realization of smart homes. The main objective of smart homes is the automation of tasks that might be complex or tedious for inhabitants by distracting them from concentrating on setting and configuring home appliances. Such automation could improve comfort, energy savings, security, and tremendous benefits for elderly persons living alone or persons with disabilities. Context awareness is a key enabling feature for development of smart homes. It allows the automation task to be done proactively according to the inhabitant’s current context and in an unobtrusive and seamlessly manner. Although there are several works conducted for the development of smart homes with various technologies, in most cases, robust. However, the context-awareness aspect of services adaptation was not based on clear steps for context elements extraction (resp. clear definition of context). In this paper, we use the divide and conquer approach to master the complexity of automation task by proposing a hybrid modular system for context-aware services adaptation in a smart living room. We propose to use for the context-aware adaptation three techniques of machine learning, namely Naïve Bayes, fuzzy logic and case-based reasoning techniques according to their convenience.     

Socio-technical case study method in building performance evaluation

ABSTRACT

Raymond J. Cole’s body of work, spanning sustainable design, system complexity and human agency, has encouraged researchers to reconceptualize the notions of comfort and building performance. However, methods for predicting energy use and assessing environmental performance have remained predominantly within a reductionist approach common to physics and engineering. The recognition that building performance is characterized by interactive adaptivity and co-evolution of the physical with the social has not been matched by the generation of new methods. Although social practice theories that articulate the socio-technical nature of the built environment have been increasingly appropriated to understand occupants’ role in performance, the challenge of studying buildings as complex socio-technical systems remains. This methodological paper discusses the application of the case study method (CSM) to the study of 10 retrofit projects selected from the Retrofit for the Future (RfF) Programme in UK between 2011 and 2012. Guided by Greene’s framework for methodological discourse, the epistemic regime is articulated under four headings: philosophical assumptions, investigative logics, guidelines for practice and contribution to system perspective. The discussion of these domains highlights the fecundity of CSM in providing a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between social and technical systems in performance.     

Milton Keynes Energy Park revisited: Changes in internal temperatures and energy usage

A follow-up study was undertaken of 15 ‘low-energy’ dwellings in Milton Keynes, UK, that were originally monitored for temperature and energy consumption from 1989 to 1991. These measurements were repeated in 2005–2006, with the results compared with the baseline using standardised daily external conditions of 5 °C. The 2005–2006 study found mean temperatures of 19.8 °C (95% confidence interval: 19.7–20.5) for living rooms and 19.3 °C (CI: 19.6–20.1) for main bedrooms. Weak evidence was found for a 10% increase in gas consumption over 15 years to 87 kWh/day (95%CI: 77–96) and overall electricity usage rose by 30% to 15 kWh/day (CI: 13.6–16.5). Dwellings were classified into three groups of low, middle, and high-energy users in 1990. In 2005–2006, this high group consumed more energy than the other two groups combined and accounted for most increases in energy use; their gas usage rose by 20% to 130 kWh/day (110–150), electricity by 75% to 28 kWh/day (CI: 25.3–31.2), and had 50% higher energy intensity at 172 Wh/m² (CI: 150–195). On average the high group comprised dwellings that were larger, had been extended, and whose occupants had higher incomes than the two other groups. The results suggest that research for the development of energy policy, including building regulations, should focus both on how energy is currently used and on households where the largest future increases are likely to occur.     

Strategies for the modification of the urban climate and the consequent impact on building energy use

It is well established that urbanisation has a significant effect on the local climate. The climate of an urban area will differ from that of a nearby rural area. Modifications to the relevant properties of the urban environment will amplify or reduce these differences. This paper briefly summarises the literature and reports on the impact of these changes.