E. Dascalaki

The process of building labeling and certification in accordance to the provisions of the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD) constitutes a unique opportunity for collecting information on the characteristics of the building stock and its energy performance on a national and European level. Thus, there is a need to handle data from a large stock of buildings and to be able to analyse information and extract practical trends and benchmarks. Stakeholders and technical managers who oversee a number of buildings experience similar needs in order to collect, organize and monitor the energy performance of a large pool of buildings. To facilitate these efforts, a common evaluation database and
complimentary software for its exploitation have been developed in the frame of a European project.
This paper presents an overview of the database and its available tools, and the main results from a case study on Hellenic buildings that reveals relevant characteristics. The Hellenic database included a sample of 250 buildings from different regions in Greece, with a breakdown that is representative of the national building stock. The main results focus on the buildings’ energy performance, thermal envelope characteristics and the exploitation of solar thermal energy.

Hotels rank in the highest levels of energy consumption in the tertiary building sector. Improved service quality mandates that hotel building, facilities and installations are maintained to the highest standards in order to remain competitive, thus renovations are becoming common. Renovation is usually financially attractive when compared to demolition and reconstruction. This offers great opportunities for promoting energy efficient measures, exploitation of renewable energy sources (RES) and rational use of energy (RUE) in the hotel sector. The XENIOS methodology and software permits the user to perform a preliminary hotel audit and make a first assessment of cost-effective energy efficient renovation practices, technologies and systems. This paper presents a brief overview of the methodology and the various features of the XENIOS software and focuses on the results from four audits and a pilot study carried out in Mediterranean hotels.

Hospital operating rooms (ORs) require efficient HVAC installations to secure the highly demanding indoor environmental conditions for patients and medical personnel. This paper reviews published standards and guidelines on design, installation, commissioning, operation, and maintenance of HVAC installations in hospital ORs, indoor thermal conditions, and summarizes measured data from short monitoring of indoor thermal conditions along with audit results and main characteristics of 20 ORs in 10 major Hellenic hospitals. Measured indoor temperature ranged from 14 to 29°C, and relative humidity from 13 to 80%. The number of air changes per hour ranged from 3.2 to 58 ACH. The commonly encountered problems include insufficient indoor air exchange, poor control on indoor thermal conditions, bad space ergonomics that influence the ventilation system operation, poor technical installations maintenance and understaffed technical departments. However, there are still opportunities for energy conservation, without sacrificing comfort, and overall quality of patient care or services.