Energy performance analysis of residential buildings in Bari, in the South of Italy

Abstract

Refurbishment of existing residential buildings and energy saving represent important aspects of environmental sustainability, against the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and scarcity of resources. Many economic interests have turned built heritage into a global energy problem: they have not respected the places and the different climatic areas. It has caused damage to urban landscape and the deterioration of living conditions. Nevertheless, built heritage is an opportunity to apply many technologies to achieve significant improvements in comfort and thermal performance. Therefore, this work focuses on thermal analysis about one of the most common building types in the city of Bari, in the South of Italy. The aim is to obtain an estimate of energy consumption of a part of the city: energy simulation softwares, such as DesignBuilder / EnergyPlus and Mc4, are useful to evaluate the thermal performances of studied buildings and to compare dynamic and steady state results. In fact, in Mediterranean area, the evaluation of their thermal performance is necessary because if, on one hand, buildings have low insulation in winter, on the other hand, they need cooling in summer. These data are essential to understand the influence of this building type on the heat balance of the city. The results permit us to obtain a detailed analysis of a significant area in the city of Bari using GIS technologies that allow us to estimate the energy needs of built heritage on a territorial level. In this context, it is possible to carry out a mapping of the studied area and its energy needs. In this way, it can be used to choose some retrofit strategic actions in order to improve the energy performance of buildings for sustainable energy planning.