Urban building energy simulation for performance analysis of an energy community model in the Italian context

Carbon emissions of buildings can be more easily and efficiently decreased on an urban scale respect to the single building renovation actions. Energy communities allow local population to join forces and invest in clean energy promoting the EU energy transition. Urban-scale analysis is a complex task and it requires the integration of multiple emerging tools to adequately evaluate a set of possible variables in designing buildings (geometrical and non-geometrical information).

Despite the frequent mentions of zero-carbon communities concept in previous researches, the number of optimization studies using archetype or real cases is still in its early phases. The present study starts from a representative energy community model, located in the Italian climate contexts, with the goal to run a sensitivity analysis of several building-related parameters. The core of the model is the URBANopt energy modeling platform, an open-source Software Development Kit (SDK) for modeling high-performance buildings and energy systems at a district scale.

The platform is utilized to perform a set of simulations in which the effects of various parameters (such as building uses, schedule of use, location, photovoltaic area and other energy conservation measures) are carefully compared and analyzed. This study provides a ranking in accordance with the impact of the different parameters on the overall community’s energy balance, guiding designers and policymakers’ decision respectively in the technical and economic investment during the early design phase of an energy community development.