The 2018 edition of the World Sustainable Energy Days (WSED) in Wels has tied in well with the end of the BRICKER project this month. As an event gathering some 600 expert delegates from 66 countries, WSED offered an interesting opportunity to highlight how our project has achieved primary energy savings, lower energy bills and cut down CO2 emissions in its demo buildings.
As part of the WSED conference on Technology Innovation: Energy and Buildings on 1 March, project coordinator Juan-Ramón de las Cuevas delivered a presentation before an audience of 100 delegates on the new technologies for retrofitting public buildings.
The following day, BRICKER held its final workshop as part of a series of parallel workshops by fellow projects at WSED. Members of the consortium including Acciona, Onur Enerji, Özyegin University, RANK, Province of Liège and University of Liège, each showcased various components of the BRICKER system using real-world examples from the demo site works. It was an ideal opportunity to highlight both the BRICKER system and the actual results from the project, a 4.5-year endeavour now coming to its conclusion.
During the workshop, Onur Günduru looked at some of the lessons learnt from retrofitting a public hospital in Aydin, Turkey. As a technical consultant to the demo site works, he emphasised the need for clear communication with multiple stakeholders in order to deal with changes along the way. For example, the solar field had to change location and further units added. This required site assessments, fine tuning of operational scenarios based on performance data. Onur showed delegates various aspects of technical coordination using a process of determining “problem”, “solution” and “future work” at three distinct stages of the retrofitting “before”, during” and “after”.
Remaining on the demo case in Aydin, Yasemin Somuncu of Özyegin University gave insights into the constraints that had to be overcome, in particular, the 24/7 use of the building as it is a hospital with operating theatres and intensive care units. She also covered the finer details of the building envelop used at the hospital demo site.
For the Belgian demo site which is an engineering college, Antoine Parthoens from University of Liège, alongside Juan-Ramón de las Cuevas, explained how breathing windows and phase change materials are already improving life for students and staff. Raymond Charlier from Province de Liège showed how the passive and active technologies used in the BRICKER system were integrated into the college blocks and how they are now acting as a live showcase about retrofitting an education building. Under the heading “people, price and politics”, his colleague Catherine Pinet highlighted some of the non-technical challenges associated with revamping public buildings such as public procurement processes and timelines.
In all, there was a good show of BRICKER members at the increasingly renowned World Sustainable Energy Days, with all the whole BRICKER system presented.
23 March 2018