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How can you really know you’re making the right retrofit choices for your building?
It’s not a straightforward question, and there’s certainly no “one-size-fits-all” solution when it comes to decarbonising our existing buildings. Our buildings are complex and unique entities, meaning the optimum retrofit scenario for one building could be entirely different to the next. This can be based on a range of factors including the building’s age, function, location/climate and available budget, amongst many other things, which poses obvious challenges when determining which retrofit measures will be most suitable.
Energy modelling, and dynamic simulation tools specifically, can be powerful in evaluating and selecting the appropriate retrofit interventions for any building type. This provides a more robust and accurate assessment of building energy performance than other more simplified approaches, that use static calculations and spreadsheet-based tools.
Dynamic thermal modelling tools enable design teams to simulate a building’s energy usage in fine detail, accounting for time-varying parameters, such as occupancy, and local climate conditions. By contrast, simplified models or steady-state methods, such as those based on degree days or simple U-value calculations, make broad assumptions about average conditions. These models often fail to capture temporal variations, resulting in less accurate and unreliable predictions of how retrofits will influence energy demand.
Furthermore, these simplified approaches will generally consider each element (e.g. insulation or window upgrades) in isolation. Therein lies significant risk that results will overlook how these changes interact with one another within the context of the whole building, potentially leading to inefficiencies or unintended outcomes such as overheating.
Industry best practice dictates that designers must consider how different systems, both passive and dynamic, will interact with the whole building when it comes to evaluating different retrofit interventions. Dynamic simulation models can be used to test various measures holistically and directly compare their impact across a range of factors, encompassing energy, carbon, cost and comfort. This supports informed decision making, with full consideration being given to the long-term performance of systems, offering deeper insights into key performance metrics as well as potential payback periods and return on investment.
This approach is also important in being able to mitigate the risk of any potential negative impacts arising from building retrofits, such as issues with ventilation or overheating. Considering how interventions will perform when implemented in conjunction with other measures can further ensure appropriate system sizing to limit the embodied carbon impacts, while helping to ensure that retrofits are compatible with future low-energy designs.
A whole-life carbon approach is of course essential when approaching building retrofits for any building typology. At IES, we leverage the connection between our VE software and the life-cycle assessment tool, One Click LCA, to enable holistic consideration of both the embodied and operational carbon impact of various interventions.
To read more on this subject, download our free guide: Energy Modelling for Retrofit: A Best Practice Approach to Decarbonising Existing Buildings
You can also check out the resources on our Net-Zero Retrofit page or watch our on-demand Energy Modelling & Data Analytics for Net-Zero Retrofit webinar for further insights and recommendations from the IES Consulting team.
