DIRECTION’s 6th progress meeting on 22 and 23 April, marks start of home stretch

Coordinators CARTIF hosted the DIRECTION project's 6th progress meeting and general assembly at their premises in Valladolid, Spain last April 22 and 23.

The project is now entering its final months and the meeting centred on monitoring, replicability and results for exploitation. In attendance were both the Project Officer and the Project Technical Advisor in order to gain full insight into how DIRECTION has been deployed. It was also the opportunity for them to deliver their impressions and recommendations as well as to visit the CARTIF III building, used as one of DIRECTION's demonstrators.

At this stage of the project, all the energy saving measures have been implemented at the CARTIF III and NuOffice demonstrators. For a year now, monitoring data has been collected and stored. This in turn is being fed into calculations for key performance indicators (KPIs). Also, the demo teams have been collecting the first feedback from users regarding comfort issues. At the NuOffice building, monitoring of the absorption heat pump has not yet yielded meaningful results, due to the relatively mild 2013/2014 winter. Learning outcomes relating to enhanced exteriors are currently being exploited at the NuOffice 2 and 3 buildings.

We are also in the process of conducting economic analysis. This involves finalising performance assessments/savings verifications, and then comparing measured values to those which were estimated earlier in the project. This analytical and reporting activity brings together all the monitoring data, calculations and energy balances required to support our activities for ensuring replication. As part of this, DIRECTION is planning three workshops in Spain and Italy, each aimed at different stakeholder groups (developers/contractors, clients/end-user, architects).

The meeting offered the opportunity to highlight some conclusions and recommendations for new energy efficient buildings. Much of the success coming from our endeavours is largely dependent on a thorough preliminary assessment of factors relating to both energy and location. Energy simulation provides sufficient data to compare different conceptual building designs in order to forecast potential modifications or variances due to the buildings' use and the relative distribution of costs during construction and operation. In other words, the energy building simulation offers an overview of all reimbursements across the entire life cycle of the building including cost shifts from the construction to operating or vice versa, taking all relevant impacts on the use and function of the building into account.

The overall success of a project such as DIRECTION is replicability, and a workshop for delegates looked at how to plan for large scale deployment of low energy buildings in various scenarios. It was delivered by partners DRAGADOS and was based on three pillars: smart design, technology, and economic analysis.

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DIRECTION is coordinated by Fundación CARTIF (Boecillo – Valladolid) and developed in cooperation with other 10 partners: DRAGADOS and 1A Ingenieros ; EURAC, the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and Claudio Lucchin & Architetti Associati; Domagk Gewerbepark, Fraunhofer Institut für Bauphysik and FACIT; Enginsoft SpA ; youris.com G.E.I.E .

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No. 285443

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