Claudio Rochas

This guideline serves as a support material for municipalities in the process of developing their local energy efficiency strategy for municipal buildings. The idea of this guideline is: how to find an optimal energy efficiency strategy for municipal buildings by the support of an organized and structured self-assessment tool made to define capacity constraints in energy management in municipalities. At best, this leads to defining specific Capacity Building Schemes. The starting point is the evaluation of the current strategic local energy plans (in terms of SEAP, SECAP or energy plans in municipalities). Further steps are dedicated to an organizational and process analysis at the administrative level in order to re-arrange workflows and municipal energy management systems. In this context, it is beneficial to build retrofitting strategies including either building refurbishment actions or IT solutions for energy monitoring which is harmonized with potential investments in energy e...

If there is no additional mechanical ventilation system installed in the existing buildings originally designed with natural ventilation, then after renovation they become highly airtight. Air tightness reduces heat losses due to infiltration, but it also significantly decreases indoor air quality, as there is limited supply of fresh air. Energy losses due to ventilation and air infiltration represent a huge amount of the energy delivered for space heating. Solution of the problem would be a mechanical ventilation system with a heat recovery unit. The advantage of using heat recovery units is energy saving, and as a result, savings on costs for the operation of the ventilation system. This paper describes renovation carried out in a 4-storey apartment buildings. During the study, three buildings have been analysed; all of them are built in 1970, using the same materials, the same constructive solutions. Renovation was carried out by one company, using the same materials and same ren...

A main objective of the Directive 2006/32/EC on energy end-use efficiency and energy services (ESD) is to stimulate the market for energy services and the delivery of energy efficiency improvement measures to final consumers. An interpretation of this objective is simple: To support the development of the markets for energy efficiency services (EES). However, the development of the EES markets raises several questions: Can these markets become an effective instrument for increasing energy efficiency? Who will be the main actors in these markets? How can these actors successfully develop new EES business models for the customers that lead to an additional market growth? How can they become profitable? And how should policies and measures be designed to stimulate EES markets? Since 2009, within the framework of the "Intelligent Energy - Europe" programme of the European Commission, the project ChangeBest, has contributed in answering to these questions. The ChangeBest projec...

Simulation of the Stock of Electric Appliances and Calculation of Standby Losses for Latvia Standby losses in households are discussed in this paper. As there was no information on the total volume of standby losses in Latvia, the objective of the study was to calculate: the percentage from the household total electricity bill that goes to standby losses; what are the total costs for these losses; and how much CO2 is produced to generate the amount of electricity that is needed to cover these standby losses. All calculations were conducted for one and for all households in Latvia and the results of one household were compared with an average European household. Finally, the savings potential that can be obtained implementing the Eco-design Directive and other political instruments was examined.

The majority of Latvian housing stock, mostly apartment buildings housing 77 % of Latvian population, was built after the World War II. The housing sector is responsible for more than 70 % of the total national heat consumption. Analyzing the available data from recent renovation projects it is concluded that currently the best achieved result for space heating of an apartment building is 77 kWh/m2 per year. This can be further improved implementing ventilation heat recovery in apartment building renovations

This document provides an overview of the most important results of the Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) Project SELINA – Standby and Off-Mode Energy Losses In New Appliances Measured in Shops. Standby power is a general term commonly used to describe the low power modes in which many electrical and electronic products are, when not performing their main function. For more than a decade, it has been recognized that the energy consumption in low power modes for electrical and electronic products is an important issue because it represent permanent loads (sometimes up to 24 hours per day) of a huge number of products. With the 1 W standby initiative of the International Energy Agency (IEA), several low power mode measurement campaigns have been led on a regular basis in a number of countries outside and inside Europe Union (EU). Based on these results and on the Energy-using Products Study Lot 6, the EU has prepared new regulation to limit the standby and off-mode power consumption of ...

Solar and pellet combisystem for Nordic climate condition has been developed. The system is installed for an apartment building in the city of Sigulda, Latvia. The system was designed and optimized with dynamic simulation using a TRNSYS environment. The performance of a solar combisystem pilot project has been evaluated and compared with the simulation results

Small-Scale Cogeneration Plant Data Processing and Analysis In the article, the operational data on electricity and heat energy generation in a small-scale cogeneration plant are analysed. Different measurements done in the plant formed a basis for estimation and evaluation of the savings of primary energy in comparison with distributed energy production. The authors analyse the efficiency values for the heat and the electricity production in the cogeneration regime and the savings of primary energy when the cogeneration plant works with partial load.

ABSTRACT This paper presents a method for urban resilience quantification from the energy metabolism perspective, taking into account different sustainability dimensions and introducing such aspects as environmental, social, economic, technical and risk aspects. The aim is to develop a methodology for resilience index quantification for urban thermal energy system taking into account different levels of urban energy metabolism - production, supply and use, and approbate it on the real Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian cities examples. The proposed approach includes a set of indicators to be used within the scope of thermal energy metabolism. The analysis is supposed to end with identification of the “weak points” of each studied energy system in order to help stakeholders develop the strategy for resilience enhancement in future.