Exploitation of the environmental energy resources: indicators and design strategies

Assuming that isolating a building might not be the best solution to exploit the free renewable sources of its environment (outside air temperature, sky temperature, solar radiation…), a first identification step has been carried out to determine which sources should be exploited. Building energy simulations have been carried out, including various isolation levels and climatic conditions. Then, indicators have been defined in order to quantify the ability of the previous sources to cover the energy needs and the possibility for the building to exploit them. When the source’s capacity is not sufficient, a new energy management system has also been tested. Then, the previous indicators have been transposed at the scale of each wall. It has been necessary to do so in order to differentiate the high-capacity surfaces where new systems could be designed and implemented, from the low-capacity surfaces that should simply be insulated.