Evaluation of Green Buildings' Overall Performance through in Situ Monitoring and Simulations

The evaluation of the overall performance of a green building is complex, since many construction, energy and environmental aspects have to be considered. The Umbria Region in Italy, through various public tenders, recently funded several residential buildings, innovative in terms of construction quality, green technologies and sustainable solutions, such as natural building materials, integrated sunspaces, PV (photovoltaic) modules and solar collectors, geothermal heat pumps, that had to be adopted to obtain the public contribution. The University of Perugia carried out an extended monitoring of these buildings, in order to verify the actual achievement of design objectives, to certify the real savings in terms of energy and environmental loads and to assess the indoor comfort conditions for occupants. In situ thermal, acoustical and lighting measurements were carried out for more than one year. Energy simulations were performed by means of codes which implement the algorithms required by the Italian Law. Moreover, a comparison between real consumptions and simulated energy requirements was carried out. Finally, the buildings were characterized from the environmental sustainability point of view, using the method adopted by the Umbria Region. This assessment was borrowed from ITACA (Institute for Innovation and Transparency in Government Procurement and Environmental Compatibility) procedure [an Italian procedure similar to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)] and consists of 20 worksheets, one for each different performance indicator, at the aim of carefully describing the environmental quality of the building.