Work processes and sociological structures can differ significantly between organizations. These organizational aspects determine user behavior, which in turn exerts considerable influence on the key performance indicators of artificial lighting systems. Accordingly, the use of generalized assumptions about user behavior in the building design phase can lead to large discrepancies between design and operation. In the following work, the possible influences of different occupancy schemes, an essential aspect of user behavior and shaped by the organization, on energy demand and workplace-related daylight dose are evaluated. For this purpose, calculations are made based on real measurement data of an open-plan office with zoned lighting. Multi-level calculation models are used to determine improved user distributions in the room to ensure optimization according to the desired target criteria. The results show that occupancy schemes have a significant impact on energy demand, contributing... [more]

Consolidation with European social, economic and environmental programmes in the framework of Ukraine’s integration into the European energy space has become extremely important given the growing threats to energy security and should become the basis for greening regional and national innovation systems in the context of decarbonisation, the minimisation of carbon emissions and the transition to alternative energy sources. The comparison of the regions of the country by the level of enterprise innovation and the extrapolation of these results to the share of such enterprises in the total number of industrial entities in the regions helped identify their lack of correlation and emphasised the lack of stable dependence between industrial development and innovation activity. The methodology of the article includes a number of general scientific, special and interdisciplinary methods that allowed the screening of areas for the most favourable economic development, taking into account the s... [more]

The use of electric vehicles (EVs) provides a pathway to sustainable transport, reducing emissions and contributing to net-zero carbon aspirations. However, consumer acceptance has been limited by travel range anxiety and a lack of knowledge about EV technology and its infrastructure. This is especially the case in hot and oil-rich areas such as Kuwait, where transport is predominantly fossil fuel-driven. Studying the effects of high ambient temperature on EV efficiency and range is essential to improve EV performance, increase the user base and promote early adoption to secure more environmental benefits. The ability to determine the energy consumption of electric vehicles (EVs) is not only vital to reduce travel range anxiety but also forms an important foundation for the spatial siting, operation and management of EV charging points in cities and towns. This research presents an analysis of data gathered from more than 3000 journeys of an EV in Kuwait representing typical vehicle us... [more]

Encouraged by the European Union, all European countries need to enforce solutions to reduce non-renewable energy consumption in buildings. The reduction of energy (heating, domestic hot water, and appliances consumption) aims for the vision of near-zero energy consumption as a requirement goal for constructing buildings. In this paper, we review the available standards, tools and frameworks on the energy performance of buildings. Additionally, this work investigates if energy performance ratings can be obtained with energy consumption data from IoT devices and if the floor size and energy consumption values are enough to determine a dwellings’ energy performance rating. The essential outcome of this work is a data-driven prediction tool for energy performance labels that can run automatically. The tool is based on the cutting edge kNN classification algorithm and trained on open datasets with actual building data such as those coming from the IoT paradigm. Additionally, it assesses th... [more]

Considering increasingly ambitious pledges by countries and various forms of pressure from current international constellations, society, investors, and clients further up the supply chain, the question for companies is not so much whether to take decarbonisation action, but what action and by when. However, determining an ideal mix of measures to apply ‘decarbonisation efficiency’ requires more than knowledge of technically feasible measures and how to combine them to achieve the most economic outcome: In this paper, working in a ‘backcasting’ manner, the author describes seven aspects which heavily influence the composition of an ‘ideal mix’ that executive leadership needs to take a (strategic) position on. Contrary to previous studies, these aspects consider underlying motivations and span across (socio-)economic, technical, regulatory, strategic, corporate culture, and environmental factors and further underline the necessity of clarity of definitions. How these decisions influence... [more]

The farmers’ welfare and its interlinkages to energy efficiency and farm sustainability has attracted global scientific interest within the last few decades. This study examines the contribution of Agriculture 5.0 to the prosperity of the farmers in the post-pandemic era and the gradual transition to an energy-smart farm. To obtain an insight into the attributes of Agriculture 5.0 and the emerging technologies in the field, Bibliometrix analysis with the use of an R package was conducted based on 2000 data consisting of peer-reviewed articles. The data were retrieved from the Scopus database. A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze the data for a comprehensive overview of the trend, thematic focus, and scientific production in the field of Agriculture 5.0 and energy-smart farming. Emerging technologies that are part of Agriculture 5.0 in combination with alternative energy sources can provide cost-effective access to finance, weather updates, remotely monitoring, and future ene... [more]

This work is aimed at solving the problem of converting diesel power drives to diesel−hydrogen fuels, which are more environmentally friendly and less expensive alternatives to diesel fuel. The method of increasing the energy efficiency of diesel fuels has been improved. The thermochemical essence of using methanol as an alternative fuel to increase energy efficiency based on the provisions of thermotechnics is considered. Alternative methanol fuel has been chosen as the initial product for the hydrogen conversion process, and its energy value, cost, and temperature conditions have been taken into account. Calculations showed that the caloric effect from the combustion of the converted mixture of hydrogen H2 and carbon monoxide CO exceeds the effect from the combustion of the same amount of methanol fuel. Engine power and fuel energy were increased due to the thermochemical regeneration of engine exhaust gas heat. An experimental setup was created to study the operation of a converted... [more]

Building fabric retrofitting is an important first step in improving building energy efficiency. The United Kingdom’s (UK) housing stock is one of the most inefficient in Europe, and Northern Ireland has the second-highest level of fuel poverty in the UK. This Northern Irish case study developed three fabric retrofit scenarios that estimate potential demand reductions, CO2 emissions removals and retrofit costs. The first scenario reduces domestic demand by 10% and removes 6% of domestic emissions. The second scenario is more ambitious than the first, and results in an 18% reduction in demand and 12% of emissions removed. The third scenario proposes fabric retrofitting to PassivHaus standard and results in a 42% reduction in demand and 27% of emissions removed. Furthermore, retrofit schemes can provide up to approximately 350,000 jobs annually between 2022 and 2050 for the Northern Irish population. This study demonstrates how fabric retrofit scenarios can be streamlined to the unique f... [more]

This article approaches the optimal solution of energy sustainability based on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The application of renewable energy sources (RES) and unit commitment (UC) is the basic idea of this concept. Therefore, a new approach to solving the UC problem is introduced. The proposed method has a simple procedure to obtain the popular solutions in an acceptable time interval, by creating a basic model of the schedule of the state of energy units RES. It is obvious that individual consumer units, of an operational nature, take hourly performance values by performing economic evaluations on them in the sense of cost optimization. This is conducted through an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm by optimizing the dedicated cost function, simulated by annealing. Despite the acceptable solution obtained from these two steps, another shift is proposed, called the TDD process in a given consumer area. This process in the application of AI in the system of selection... [more]

Sustainable City solutions can become an essential element of the development of contemporary urban communities. This development path can also provide opportunities for organisations operating in cities and metropolises. An inherent feature of the organisation which a city constitutes is that it enables the people who make it up to cooperate. Climate packages, including the Green Deal and Fit for 55, are implemented in Europe, while in Poland decarbonisation processes are underway. The main challenges in this area include, on the one hand, a search for savings of energy consumed, and, on the other hand, a reduction in pollution resulting from the use of transport or heat or energy sources. Cities and metropolises will become green only when they manage to cope with these problems. The article aims at showing various facets of sustainable smart city management. With relations, information and knowledge gaining importance as the key organisational resource, cities have become, as organi... [more]

Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) technique, the most popular streaming method, requires a large number of hard disk drives (HDDs) to store multiple bitrate versions of many videos, consuming significant energy. A solid-state drive (SSD) can be used to cache popular videos, thus reducing HDD energy consumption by allowing I/O requests to be handled by an SSD, but this requires effective HDD power management due to limited SSD bandwidth. We propose a new SSD cache management scheme to minimize the energy consumption of a video storage system with heterogeneous HDDs. We first present a technique that caches files with the aim of saving more HDD energy as a result of I/O processing on an SSD. Based on this, we propose a new HDD power management algorithm with the goal of increasing the number of HDDs operated in low-power mode while reflecting the heterogeneous HDD power characteristics. For this purpose, it assigns a separate parameter value to each I/O task based on the ratio... [more]

In this paper, driving strategy optimization for a track is proposed for an energy efficient battery electric vehicle dedicated to the Shell Eco-marathon. A measurement-based mathematical vehicle model was developed to simulate the behavior of the vehicle. The model contains complicated elements such as the vehicle’s cornering resistance and the efficiency field of the entire powertrain. The validation of the model was presented by using the collected telemetry data from the 2019 Shell Eco-marathon competition in London (UK). The evaluation of applicable powertrains was carried out before the driving strategy optimization. The optimal acceleration curve for each investigated powertrain was defined. Using the proper powertrain is a crucial part of energy efficiency, as the drive has the most significant energy demand among all components. Two tracks with different characteristics were analyzed to show the efficiency of the proposed optimization method. The optimization results are compa... [more]

In Europe, the recent application of regulations oriented to zero-energy buildings and climate neutrality in 2050 has led to a reduction in energy consumption for heating and cooling in the construction sector. The thermal insulation of the building envelope plays a key role in this process and the requirements about the maximum allowable thermal transmittance are defined by country-specific guidelines. Typically, high insulation values provide low energy consumption for heating; however, they may also entail a risk of overheating in summer period and thus negatively affect the overall performance of the building. In addition, the embodied energy and related emissions caused by the manufacturing and transportation processes of thermal insulation cannot be further neglected in the evaluation of the best optimal solution. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the influence in terms of embodied and operational energy of various walls’ thermal insulation thicknesses on residential buildin... [more]

Our goal is to examine the efficiency of different intraday electricity markets and if any of their price prediction models are more accurate than others. This paper includes a comprehensive review of Germany, France, and Norway’s (NOR1) day-ahead and intraday electricity market prices. These markets represent different energy mixes which would allow us to analyze the impact of the energy mix on the efficiencies of these markets. To draw conclusions about extreme market conditions, (i) we reviewed the market data linked to COVID-19. We expected higher volatility in the lockdowns than before and therefore decrease in the efficiency of the prediction models. With our analysis, (ii) we want to draw conclusions as to whether a mix based mainly on renewable energies such as that in Norway implies lower volatilities even in times of crisis. This would answer (iii) whether a market with an energy mix like Norway is more efficient in highly volatile phases. For the analysis, we use data visual... [more]

Climate change has brought a compelling need for cooling living spaces to the attention of researchers as well as construction professionals. The problem of overheating enclosures is now exacerbated in traditionally affected areas and is also affecting countries that were previously less prone to the issue. In this paper, we address measurements of thermal comfort and cooling emission efficiency parameters for different devices: ceiling panels, underfloor cooling, fan-assisted radiators, and fan coil. These devices were tested in low and high cooling capacities of up to 40 W/m2 while also featuring heating dummies to imitate internal heat gains. Air temperatures were measured at different heights, allowing to evaluate the thermal stratification with high accuracy. Thermal comfort differences of the tested systems were quantified by measuring both air velocities and operative temperatures at points of occupancy. In summary, the best-performing cooling devices for the studied cooling app... [more]

This study evaluates the energy efficiency of pressure shock damping in a hydraulic lifting and leveling (HLL) module of a mobile robotic bricklaying system (RBS). The HLL module includes a servohydraulic actuator (SHA) and a hydraulic shock damper (HSD). The proposed adjustable HSD consists of a hydraulic accumulator circuit (HAC) and proportional damping valve. The frequency characteristics of the impedance and damping efficiency indices were used to evaluate the effectiveness of HSD damping. The dynamic responses of the SHA with and without HSD were analyzed based on a nonlinear state-space model. To control the damping of the pressure shock in the SHA-HSD system, a linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) controller that follows two measurement signals was implemented. The LQG controller was adapted to the specific dynamic requirements of the SHA-HSD control system and nature of the RBS shock loads. The effectiveness of the LQG controller was evaluated during RBS operation under laboratory... [more]

Grid-powered pumping plants are widespread electromechanical systems commonly set in motion by electrical machines. The productivity of these electromechanical systems varies substantially according to the shift of the location of the working point on the H-Q plane, which is determined with the help of mutual positions of the characteristics of the pump unit itself and the hydraulic parameters of the pipeline. The topic of the proposed article is mainly focused on the investigation of pumping plant productivity equipped with two various types of electrical machines known as induction and synchronous reluctance motors. A simulation method of efficiency prediction of a centrifugal pumping plant for flow regulation is proposed. The described Simulink/Matlab simulation approach is quite valuable for validating efficiency in the case of pumping plants supplied with various types of electrical machines. The data relating to the electrical machines’ efficiency estimation were obtained during... [more]

In Korea, energy consumption within apartments in metropolitan areas accounted for more than 33% of the total energy consumption by buildings in 2020. In this study, in order to increase the energy efficiency of MDU (multi-dwelling unit) complexes in metropolitan areas, improvement factors and economic effects were analyzed using ECO2, a building energy efficiency evaluation program. Optimal improvement measures are proposed, to reduce the economic burden on users by applying energy saving technologies. This study was conducted in four stages; in the first stage, using ECO2 software, five types of apartments were selected as standards among 46 complexes. Standard MDUs were selected if more than two factors were satisfied from among the following: (1) household type, (2) average exterior wall insulation and window performance, (3) average energy consumption and demand per unit area per year, (4) average applied facility system, and (5) average monthly energy demand per unit area. In the... [more]

In the EU countries, almost 50% of the produced energy is used in residential buildings. More than 25% of this energy is used to produce domestic hot water, of which almost 80% is used to heat water in domestic hot water circulation systems. This is due to high expectations on the part of residents based on their comfort, in particular regarding the supply of heat for heating and domestic hot water. In the course of their long-term research conducted on real systems, the authors confirmed that the operation of domestic hot water distribution systems causes significant costs, mainly due to heat losses. Therefore, typical variants of energy optimization of such systems were analyzed. Tests have shown that selected solutions, such as the use of control automation, are not sufficient, and recommended additional thermal insulation may not be applicable due to technical reasons. With an aim of finding a solution to the problem, the publication analyzes operational data from an existing heat... [more]

The purpose of this study is to provide a holistic review of two decades of research advancement in the indoor environmental quality modelling and indexing field (IEQMI) using bibliometric analysis methods. The explicit objectives of the present study are: (1) identifying researchers, institutions, countries (territories), and journals with the most influence in the IEQMI topic; (2) investigating the hot topics in the IEQMI field; and (3) thematically analysing the keyword evolution in the IEQMI field. A scientometric review was conducted using the bibliometric data of 456 IEQMI research articles published in the past two decades. VOSviewer software was employed for bibliometric analysis, and the SciMAT tool was used to investigate the keywords’ thematic evolution in three sub-periods (2004−2009; 2010−2015; 2016−2021). Results show that there is a continuous increment in the number of published papers in the field of IEQMI, and 60 out of 193 countries in the world have been involved in... [more]

The variety of possible solutions for the integration of heat pumps (HP) into the circuits of generation facilities dictates the need for preliminary selection of the most promising options. Determining the maximally economically efficient HP capacity may be the key limiting factor for the potential range of solutions. The purpose of the study is to analyze the influence of the type of power equipment of a thermal power plant (TPP) on the choice of HP capacity. In the course of the study, we identified factors that can influence the choice of HP capacity. The correlation between the limitation of the maximum capacity of HP (from the point of view of break-even operation in the electricity market) from the electric capacity and the efficiency of the TPP equipment was established. The ranges of HP capacity for the most common types of TPP power equipment in the Russian Federation were determined. The maximum HP capacity for TPPs based on a steam turbine unit (STU) of type K-300-170- 1P w... [more]

The lack of fresh water in the world has become a growing concern. As an open-source incremental technology for water resources, desalination has become an important method to solve the global water crisis. Based on the inherent safety, versatility, modularity, and advantages of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, the Saudi Arabia desalination project is the relying background. This paper proposes a complete solution for the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor power and water coproduction project by selecting a combination of process-proven multi-effect distillation (MED) and reverse osmosis (RO). In the scheme, a tertiary circuit is designed for the isolation of radioactive entities. An innovative comparative analysis of the engineering investment and production costs of different desalination technologies, such as MED and RO, and a comparison of the investment estimates of the “thermal” and “membrane” methods for the production of 10,000 tonnes of fresh water per day are performed.... [more]

The purpose of this research is to design an energy-efficient off-grid vending machine that has a refrigeration system powered by an environmentally friendly refrigerant. The paper presents details from the equipment’s design phase in terms of the resistance structure, photovoltaic panels area dimensioning, but also in terms of the necessary cooling load to be provided by the refrigeration system. The refrigerant chosen was R290 following a comparative analysis, which showed that it has an efficiency 6.6% higher than R134a. During the monitoring periods, the outdoors temperature varied between −4−28 °C, the relative humidity between 22−100% and yet only a slight indoor temperature variation of ±1.5 °C compared to the set value was recorded. The battery module managed to store enough energy from the photovoltaic panels to keep the vending machine functional through three consecutive days with adverse environmental conditions, as evidenced by the low variation of indoor temperature

The EU Energy Efficiency (EE) label for appliances, readjusted in March 2021 (Directive 2017/1369/EU), is a key instrument for nudging consumers towards more energy-efficient purchases. However, its effectiveness depends on its design, the information provided and consumers’ understanding of and trust in it. This paper seeks to contribute to the assessment of the EE label for appliances and to identify issues, potential improvements and challenges for successfully nudging consumers towards highly energy-efficient choices. To that end, 33 in-depth interviews have been conducted with three different groups (citizens, appliance retailers and experts in energy) to ascertain the opinions and experiences of different agents as to consumers’ preferences and opinions on EE and energy consumption. We focus on purchasing decision-making by Spanish consumers for the three main appliances: washing machines, fridges and dishwashers. The EE label for appliances seems to be well-known and reliable fo... [more]

Three-dimensional printing, or additive manufacturing, is one of the modern techniques emerging in the construction industry. Three-Dimensional Printed Concrete (3DPC) technology is currently evolving with high demand amongst researchers, and the integration of modular building systems with this technology would provide a sustainable solution to modern construction challenges. This work investigates and develops energy-efficient 3D-printable walls that can be implemented worldwide through energy efficiency and sustainability criteria. Numerical research and experimental investigations, bench tests with software packages, and high-precision modern equipment have been used to investigate the thermal performance of 3DPC envelopes with different types of configurations, arrangements of materials, and types of insulation. The research findings showed that an innovative energy-efficient ventilated 3DPC envelope with a low thermal conductivity coefficient was developed following the climatic... [more]