B E N I M P A C T S u i t e
153
BENIMPACT SUITE: A TOOL FOR ZEB PERFORMANCE
ASSESSMENT
Silvia Demattè
1
, Maria Cristina Grillo
2
, Angelo Messina
3
& Antonio Frattari
4
1
R&D Engineer, EnginSoft Trento, Italy
2
PhD student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Trento, Italy,
3
Engineer, Chief Research and Development Officer, EnginSoft Trento, Italy,
4
Full professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Trento, Italy,
Abstract
In the last years there has been a big development of European policies and regulations
on energy saving topics. This is due to the will to reach the target of 20-20-20.
Buildings consume a lot of energy, so the legal framework related to the reduction
energy consumption in this sector has had a huge evolution.
The “nearly zero energy building” (nZEB) concept was introduced in 2010, 8 years after
the release of the original EPBD directive.
By 2020 all new buildings and buildings that are subject to renovation should have very
low energy consumption, covered for the major part by renewable sources. Designing
and realizing this kind of building is a very ambitious task, which needs to be supported
by appropriate tools and software.
This paper presents a new tool for assessing buildings performance, named
BENIMPACT
Suite (Building’s ENvironmental IMPACT evaluator & optimizer), and
developed by EnginSoft (Italy). The suite is organized in different core modules that
allow to verify how the building performance level is influenced by different design
choices such as envelope shape and materials, plant systems, renewable sources use,
etc.
One of the test cases used to validate BENIMPACT Suite energy performance
evaluations an interesting Italian ZEB, finished in 2010 and called CasaZeroEnergy. It is
located in Felettano (UD-Italy), a small town in the North-East.
This building is an experimental house designed and monitored by the Laboratory of
Building Design of the University of Trento (Italy) and built by Polo Le Ville Plus Group
(Cassacco-Italy). Energy performance of this building was modeled and evaluated using
BENIMPACT Suite, and simulation results were compared with monitored data.
Keywords:
nZEB, suite, building performance, validation, monitoring.
Introduction
We want buildings in which we live to be safe, healthy, functional, comfortable, and also
aesthetically integrated into the urban context.
They also need to be properly designed to be energy efficient and environmentally
friendly to contribute to primary energy consumption reduction, one of the key objectives
in European policies as confirmed by the Kyoto protocol and the target of 20-20-20.
European regulation: an overview
Ten years ago, in 2002, the first
Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD)
2002/91/EC
was released in order
“to promote the improvement of the energy
1
BENIMPACT is a two-years research project co-funded by the autonomous Province of Trento
(Northern Italy) by means of the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund), whose
priorities include research, innovation, environmental protection and risk prevention.
