Energy Management in Buildings

The main goal of the course is to build up the right attitude to the use of energy in buildings considering also all environmental consequences. The intention is to develop a multidisciplinary approach to the energy supply and use in new and existing buildings taking advantage of knowledge from architecture, building technology, applied thermodynamics, electrical power engineering, heating, refrigeration, air-conditioning, control engineering, economics, management and data processing. The course is based on an overall assessment where outdoor environment, building and technical systems are seen in connection with energy supply, energy use and indoor environment. The objective is to develop multidisciplinary knowledge and understanding of system solutions that provide optimal indoor environment in buildings in an environmentally and cost-effective way. Lectures are dealing with indoor environment, profitability of measures, energy prices and tariffs, building physics, heat loses and gains, building installations, automatic controls, energy use analysis, practical work with energy efficiency measures, potential for energy conservation, energy monitoring and building operation.

KNOWLEGDE: The course provides the student with knowledge about:

• Holistic and multi-disciplinary solutions that provide optimal indoor environment in a resource-wise and economically sound manner.
• Calculation and evaluation methods for profitability assessments of measures.
• Indoor environment - standards and recommendations, building hygiene, health and quality of life.
• The interaction between the outdoor climate, building, energy supply and technical installation.
• Heat losses and heat gains in buildings and what affects the building's heat balance in the short and long term.
• Thermal energy supply by means of combustion and electric boilers, heat pumps, solar heating systems, and district heating.
• Technical installations for heating, cooling, ventilation, domestic hot water, lighting, heat recovery.
• Control and building automation.
• Measurement techniques and instrumentation.
• Management, operation and maintenance.

SKILLS: The course should enable the student to:

• Calculate building energy demands based on external and internal loads.
• Calculate the required air flow to achieve a satisfactory indoor environment.
• Calculate the profitability of energy efficiency measures.
• Select energy efficiency measures for new constructions and upgrading of existing buildings that are optimal for both economy and environment.

GENERAL COMPETENCE: After ended course:

• The student should have competence to calculate and evaluate buildings energy demands and achieved indoor environment.
• The student will be able to apply this expertise to selected solutions for building construction, energy supply, and technical installation that provide an optimal indoor environment in a resource-wise and economically sound manner.
• The student will be able to work in group.

Lectures, calculation exercises, simulation laboratories, laboratory assignment, and one project assignment. Term project assignment will be conducted as a problem based group work and it is weighted 30% for the final mark. The lectures and exercises are in English when students who do not speak Norwegian take the course. If the teaching is given in English, the Examination papers will be given in English only. Students are free to choose Norwegian or English for written assessments.

Some of the calculation exercises require use of building simulation tools such as SIMIEN and Excel. To work in the project assignment it is required to use the building simulation tool SIMIEN and other simulation tools together with Excel, MATLAB or Python.