Smart European Energy Performance AssessmeNt And CErtificAtion

Project Information

ePANACEA

Grant agreement ID: 892421

DOI

10.3030/892421

Project closed

EC signature date 28 April 2020

Start date 1 June 2020

End date 31 October 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 2 653 113,64

EU contribution

€ 2 466 204,31

Coordinated by

FUNDACION CENER
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ePANACEA (Smart European Energy Performance AssessmeNt And CErtificAtion)

Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2023-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) have the opportunity to play an important role in achieving the environmental and climate objectives of the EU. They form a useful tool in support of the energy transition in the buildings sector, motivating investment oriented to energy efficiency in new and existing buildings and integration of renewable energy sources as well as smart technologies that allow optimisation of the buildings’ performance. However, for the EPC to reach its full potential, several current challenges need to be overcome:
1: The gap between standard outcomes of EPC schemes and real consumption patterns, leading to inaccurate energy savings estimation from the implementation of EEMs
2: lack of accuracy of the building’s energy assessment results
3: poor user awareness related to energy efficiency
4: lack of convergence across the European Union, for instance about assessment methods and tools, calculation interval, minimum requirements for the EPC report…
5: lack of appropriate protocols for integrating of smart and novel technologies into existing workflows
6: lack of market trust in this instrument.

The overall objective of the ePANACEA project is to develop a holistic methodology for energy performance assessment and certification of buildings that can overcome the above-mentioned challenges.
ePANACEA comprises the creation of a prototype (the Smart Energy Performance Assessment Platform), making use of the most advanced techniques in dynamic and automated simulation modelling, big data analysis and machine learning, inverse modelling or the estimation of potential energy savings and economic viability check.
A relevant part of the project is to establish fluent dialogue with European policy makers, certification bodies, end-users and other stakeholders through two types of participatory actions: a feedback loop with policy makers and dialogue with end-users.
ePANACEA will demonstrate and validate reliability, accuracy, user-friendliness and cost-effectiveness of its methodology through 15 case studies in 5 European countries.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project started with the definition of a common and modular framework for the next generation of energy performance assessment and certification, covering for instance: overall, partial and additional indicators, complementarity with other instruments, prioritisation of smart and novel technologies, insights on the availability and accessibility of data in the frame of EPCs, recommendations for advanced economic feasibility analysis and the development of a common web platform.

A triple feedback loop with the main EPC’s stakeholders has successfully built, covering technical, political and social aspects. Dedicated interviews, surveys, meetings and workshops have been conducted with this aim.
Work related to the development of the three assessment methods, which take part of that the ePANACEA methodology, has been completed. A last version of the common framework for the web platform (SEPAP) and related implementation of the assessment methods has been programmed and then, it is already accessible under login credentials. At the same time a new tool for dynamic simulation has been programmed (SEPAP tool) to support the development of the assessment method 3.

Fifteen case studies (three per pilot country) were used for demonstration and validation activities in the five pilot countries, covering the process of data collection and the assessments themselves. Four of the fifteen cases were used for a preliminary testing and validation phase of assessment method 1 (data-driven method) and the other two were used to support the development of assessment methods 2 and 3. Finally, each of the case studies was assessed using the three assessment methods developed and their corresponding tools, resulting in a total of 45 assessments and their comparison.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

ePANACEA aims to address the current challenges of the EPC, with a particular focus on the performance gap between calculated and actual consumption patterns, the inclusion of the user dimension and the improvement of the clarity of the information provided by the EPC. With this main objective, ePANACEA has developed an innovative, holistic and flexible methodology, based on three different energy assessment methods and their decision matrix, covering technical building innovations and the use of actual building data for energy modelling.

1. Smart & performance data-driven of building energy performance assessment focuses on the use of monitoring data sources to complement the existing EPC schemes, covering normalization and calibration of annual use.
2. Method 2, “Simplified method based on monthly calculation interval” is based on the methodology provided by the standard 52016 as part of the set of standards developed under Commission Mandate M/480.
3. Advanced & automated simulation modelling based on dynamic simulation for EPC implies the development and optimization of a procedure for the use of dynamic simulation and auto-calibration of white box building energy models for EPC systems, including the improvement of the cost-effectiveness of the whole process in relation to the state of the art of this type of assessments.

The development of tools during the project to support the workflow of the assessment methods has focused on taking advantage of running models in the cloud, using computationally powerful servers to minimise the use of time, and implementing automatic approaches for each step of the workflow; modelling, calibration, calculation, cost-optimal assessment and results.
In addition to the online platform, a global installation package of the SEPAP tool has been developed for local installation on the user's PC. This includes advanced functionality to improve the cost effectiveness of the building energy model and autocalibration. In addition to the energy performance assessment itself, additional calculated indicators to the EPC such as SRI, comfort and IAQ indicators have been implemented through these tools.


The ePANACEA project has contributed significantly to the negotiation of the EPBD Directive during the second half of 2023 (under the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union), as it has already provided conclusions on aspects of certification methodology, improvement of accuracy, alternatives for integration with other aspects such as the SRI, the Building Renovation Passport and the relevance of usability analysis and improvement of the Energy Performance Certificate.
The ePANACEA project has organised workshops to work on possible improvements to the EPC in order to increase its usefulness, and these results have been taken into account in the negotiation of Annex V of the said Directive, since it is important to assess the mandatory and voluntary indicators, as well as how they are included in the certificate itself.

Case-study FI: Energy efficient school building (Finland)

Case-study AT: Nearly-zero-energy residential building complex KooWo Volkersdorf (Austria)

Case-study SP: Public office building

ePANACEA project identity

Case-study BE: Single-family house from the 80s (Belgium)

Case-study GR: Bioclimatic office building (Greece)