In this study, the energy conservation potential of selected retrofitting interventions on an office building were investigated, on the basis of which some rational strategies for the improvement of building envelopes in terms of energy, environment and comfort design were proposed. Examined were various measures on envelope constructions that can be retrofitted to existing buildings. By using simulation techniques, the effectiveness of such measures in reducing energy consumption and environmental threat were also assessed. Effects of glazing types, effect of insulation and thermal mass were analyzed as energy efficient retrofit measures to the Engineering Building (MM building) situated on Middle East Technical University Campus, Ankara. The Energy-10 computer program was used for the modeling and simulation of the energy flows through the envelope to examine measures for reducing thermal load. Within this framework, the energy conservation potential of single and combined retrofitting actions was investigated. Based on results from the evaluation model, it was found that a saving of 161.20 MWh in the annual heating load could result, depending on the glazing type. The evaluation showed that thermal insulation is the most effective factor in thermal performance when placed as an exterior layer on walls. The study showed thermal mass has significant impact on increasing the duration, where highest temperatures were achieved, under passive mode. The study also revealed that applying a combination of retrofitting measures which responded to the challenges and opportunities presented by different fa&ccedil / ade orientations, a saving of 52.41% can be achieved in annual heating energy use in case study building.

Providing conditioned and fully controlled room is the final goal for having a comfortable building. But on the other hand making smart controllers to provide the required cooling or heating load depending on occupants' real time feeling is necessary. This study has emphasized on finding a meaningful and steady state parameter in human body that can be interpreted as comfort criterion which can be expressed as the general occupants' sensation through their ambient temperature. There are lots of researches on human physiological behavior in different situations and also different body parts reaction to the same ambient situation. Body parts which have the biggest reliable linear fluctuation to the changes are the best subject for this research. For these tests, wrist and palm have been selected and their temperatures on different people have been measured accurately with thermal camera to follow the temperature trend on various comfort levels. It is found that each person reaches to his own unique temperature on these two spots, when he/ she feels comfortable, or in other word each person's body temperature is a precise nominate for comfort feeling of that individual. So in future by having this unique comfort parameter and applying them to the HVAC system temperature control, controlling the dynamic temperature and correlating the indoor condition depending on the occupants instant thermal comfort level, would be a rational choice to bring convenience while energy has been saved more.

This thesis deals with the energy saving in smart building with focus on the impact of the user behaviour on the energy consumption. The problem of human behaviour modelling has been widely studied in the state of the art, but it is still an open problem in the field of smart building since the stochastic nature of the behaviour is difficult to be accurately represented by numerical tools. An interdisciplinary approach is proposed in order to identify the suitable user features from the psychological and social point of view and to integrate such a representation into a DSS for appliance scheduling and energy cost reduction. The proposed method has exploited location-based features of the users in order to represent their habits and needs and to compute the schedules that maximize the user acceptance toward an “energy-aware” behaviour. The obtained results point out a reduction of the peak-to-average ratio higher than 40% also considering the user constraints imposed by their presence into the building.

Les modèles énergétiques des bâtiments à l’échelle du quartier sont généralement simplifiés pour faire face au manque de données et pour réduire le coût de calcul. Cependant, l’impact de ces simplifications sur la validité des modèles n’est pas systématiquement analysée, en particulier lorsqu’on s’intéresse à la courbe de charge. Pour combler ce manque, une méthodologie permettant de quantifier la validité des simplifications, notamment vis-à-vis de la courbe de charge, est proposée. Cette méthodologie est appliquée aux simplifications couramment utilisée pour les modèles thermiques d’enveloppe de bâtiments grâce à une plateforme numérique développée dans le cadre de cette thèse. Cette plateforme permet de générer et simuler automatiquement des modèles énergétiques de bâtiments, avec différents niveaux de détails, à partir de données issues de systèmes d’information géographique. La parallélisation des simulations énergétiques des bâtiments est utilisée à l’échelle du quartier, afin de tirer avantage de la structure du modèle global et de réduire les temps de calculs. La définition d’indicateurs spécifiques selon l’objectif de simulation apparait clairement comme l’étape essentielle lorsque l’on s’intéresse à la courbe de charge. Les résultats indiquent que la puissance est plus sensible aux simplifications que la consommation annuelle d’énergie. Les différents effets induits sont quantifiés et analysés physiquement. La capacité de l’échelle du quartier à atténuer les impacts des simplifications et d’intégrer les données statistiques est démontrée. La quantification des impacts des simplifications permet de guider l’adaptation des modèles vis-à-vis des objectifs de simulation et vis-à-vis des contraintes techniques. Cette contribution a pour objectif d’améliorer la performance des simulations énergétiques à l’échelle de la ville, et de favoriser leur développement, afin de répondre aux enjeux futurs. / District-scale building energy models are generally simplified to cope with a lack of data and to reduce computational cost. However, the impacts of these simplifications on model accuracy are not systematically studied, particularly when considering power demand. The present manuscript introduces a methodology to determine the suitability of any simplifications, notably those at the district scale, and considering the power demand. This methodology was applied to usual simplifications of the building envelope model thanks to a specific platform developed in the frame of this thesis. This platform enables automatically generating and simulating building energy models with different modelling levels of detail from geographical information systems. The parallelisation of the building energy simulations was notably implemented at the district scale in order to benefit from the model structure and to efficiently reduce the computational duration. The definition of indicators related to specific simulation objectives appears to be a necessary step when focusing on power demand. The results show a higher sensitivity to simplifications of the power demand than the annual energy consumption. These effects are quantified and physically analysed. The district-scale ability to attenuate the impacts of simplifications and to integrate statistical sources of data were demonstrated. The resulting quantification of the impacts of the simplifications made it possible to guide the adaptations of models to the simulation objectives and to the technical constraints. Such contribution aims to increase the efficiency and to favour the development of city-scale energy simulations, which are particularly needed to cope with future challenges.

Low-emissivity (low-E) window films are designed to improve the energy performance of windows and prevent indoor overheating by solar radiation. These films can be applied to different types of glazing units without the need for changing the whole window. This characteristic offers the possibility to improve the energy performance of the window of old and historic buildings for which preservation regulations say windows should remain more or less unchanged. This research aims to figure out to what extent a low-E window film can improve thermal comfort and energy performance of an old three-storey historic stone building in the cold climate of Mid-Sweden. In this research, first, with help of the simulation software “IDA ICE”, the entire building was modelled without window films in a one-year simulation. Second step was to add the low-E window films (3M Thinsulate Climate Control 75 (CC75)) to all the windows and repeat the simulation. Comparison between the results of the two cases revealed an improvement in energy use reduction as well as the thermal comfort when applying the films. For the application of the window films, a cost analysis using payback method was carried out which showed a long- time payback period. Although an investment with a long-time payback period is considered as a disadvantage, for historic buildings with very strict retrofit regulations specially when it comes to the building’s facades, application of the low-emissivity window films for better energy performance and thermal comfort is among the recommendable measures, but not necessarily the best.

The aim of the thesis is the energy rating of buildings. The introduction included the issues of the topic, including normative and legislative regulations, process energy performance certificates along with energy audits for residential building. The object is evaluated in terms of energy, economic and environmental. Within the energy audit was designed and evaluated austerity measures.