Improving the Energy Performance of Public Buildings Equipped with Individual Gas Boilers due to Thermal Retrofitting

• Main Authors: Anna Życzyńska, Dariusz Majerek, Zbigniew Suchorab, Agnieszka Żelazna Václav Kočí, Robert Černý
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: energy audits; thermal refurbishment; final energy; primary energy; energy consumption
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/6/1565

The article assesses an impact of thermal retrofitting on an improvement of the energy quality of public buildings in terms of their heating. The analysis covered a group of 14 buildings, including schools, kindergartens or offices, while energy audits were carried out for 12 of them. The indications of individual gas meters were the source of actual data for the assessment of changes in energy consumption indexes in operating conditions. The analysis showed a clear improvement in the energy quality of buildings; however, the actual effects were much lower than forecasted. The average forecasted decrease in energy consumption was supposed to be 64.3%, but the measured data showed only 37.1%. The investigation confirmed that the most complex refurbishing provided the most satisfactory decrease in energy consumption (51.4% of real decrease in energy consumption), while objects with partial thermal refurbishing reached an efficiency of only 21.8%. It was stated that in operating conditions, special attention should be paid to the manner of energy use, since different indicators of energy consumption can be obtained with the same parameters of building’s balance cover. The results obtained can be further utilized in thermal-refurbishment implementation procedures. Follow-up investigations on the impact of selected parameters on energy consumption are planned.