Evaluation of the corrected seasonal energy demand, for buildings classification, to be compared with a standard performance scale

In the European panorama, the relevant increase of the buildings energy consumptions has resulted, from the normative point of view (European directive 2002/91/EC [European Parliament and Council of December 16th, 2002 on the energy performance of buildings, Official journal of the European Communities, L 1/65] and the relative national norms - for example Italian Decrees 192/05-311/06), in the imposition of minimum standards of construction, limiting the specific energy requirements specifically for heating and cooling. Moreover, in some countries it is being started to introduce, for buildings that respect the minimum performances levels imposed, incentive and defiscalization measures, function of their particular energetic efficiency and the corresponding performance class. Therefore, to compare the construction quality of different buildings, through energy performance classification, the authors propose a procedure for the determination of the corrected energy demand, separately for heating and cooling, independent of buildings location and directly comparable to a standard seasonal performance scale, defined on the entire territory of application. The procedure is so developed through simulation on a wide range of case-studies and then tested on a different buildings set: its effectiveness results in the attribution to each building test of an univocal performance class, providing an energy performance evaluation not affected by the building localization. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.