Analysis and optimization of building energy efficiency in Hammarby Sjöstad

Abstract: It is often considered that building performance in an operational phase is not as good as its designed performance. In fact, approximately 40% of the world’s total primary energy consumption is accounted existing buildings. Therefore, it would be of a great importance to analyze and optimize the existing buildings performance by taking total energy consumption and comfort situation into consideration. This is possible through measuring and analyzing the current building performance. Hammarby Sjöstad is a high profile example of sustainable city development which has been chosen as a case study in this research project because most of the operational buildings located there have not reached their projected efficiency during the design phase. Therefore, the main objective of this research study is to investigate this problem and formulate cost-effective, high performance solutions in order to increase the overall efficiency of the buildings in Hammarby area. In this study a “Case Study” methodology has been performed with literature studies, in-depth interviews, seminars and gathering of quantitative data, concerning the operational goals of the environmental program of Hammarby Sjöstad. To gather the required data, meetings with different organizations were scheduled. More than 15 important parameters were gathered for more than 100 buildings in Hammarby Sjöstad. Going through all the data, some relations were discovered which led to interesting yet simple solutions for the low energy efficiency of the buildings in the area. Patterns were recognized however they had to be evaluated and their accuracy had to be tested. Moreover, to further evaluate the performance of the buildings, Energy audits were done with the help of an energy expert. The aforementioned buildings were visited and their performance was checked in detail to further prove the pattern results. Different parameters were considered during the visits including the architecture, technical installations and maintenance. Meanwhile, by taking advantage of the DesignBuilder software, a number of simulations were performed in order to further examine the previous findings. Finally, some practical recommendations and also conclusions are presented.