Assessment of the impact of a centralized heating system equipped with programmable thermostatic valves on building energy demand

The aim of the work presented in this paper concerns the assessment of actual energy savings achieved adopting a common tool of building thermal automation systems such as thermostatic valves. The idea comes from the study of the European Standard CEN EN15232 "Energy performance of buildings - Impact of Automation, Controls and Building Management" which highlights how the inclusion in buildings of automation systems leads to a reduction of energy consumption for the whole building. Starting from here, the actual advantages for the single user in adopting programmable thermostatic valves was evaluated taking into account the possible differences in heating energy demands due to an on/off timetable customization. The case study is a reference building sited in three different locations in Italy with two different values of envelope insulation. By means of Trnsysl7 tool the reference building was divided into six thermal zones each one modelling an apartment. The possibility to customize the on/off timetable, through the use of programmable thermostatic valves, may introduce thermal dispersions. As a matter of facts when a user switch off his heating terminals his apartment tends to be a heat sink for the adjacent ones. The purpose of this study is to evaluate if the switching inhomogeneity due to the customization may constitute sensible energy penalties to other users. The results of this study may provide a contribution to the definition of the correct management policies of the terminals customization in order to optimize the use of the building automation systems. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license