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Available online 26 March 2015
Keywords:
Energy retrot
Energy audit
Schools refurbishment
Cluster analysis
Energy consumption
a b s t r a c t
More than 30 % of the Italian schools have very low energy efciency due to aging or poor quality of
construction. The current European policy on energy saving, with the Commission Delegated Regulation
(EU) 244/2012, recommends a cost-optimal analysis of retrot improvements, starting from some reference buildings. One relevant issue is the denition of a set of reference buildings effectively representative
of the considered stock. A possible solution could be found using data mining techniques, such as the
K-means clustering method, which allows the division of a large sample into more homogeneous and
small groups. This work adopts the cluster analysis to nd out a few school buildings representative of
a sample of about 60 schools in the province of Treviso, North-East of Italy, thus reducing the number
of buildings to be analyzed in detail to optimize the energy retrot measures. Real consumption data
of the scholastic year 20112012 were correlated to buildings characteristics through regression and
the parameters with the highest correlation with energy consumption levels used in cluster analysis to
group schools. This method has supported the denition of representative architectural types and the
identication of a small number of parameters determinant to assess the energy consumption for air
heating and hot water production.
2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
According to the latest report about school buildings of the
Italian Association for the Environment Safeguard, in Italy 42 000
schools are currently in operation and about 60 % of them were
built before 1974 [1]. Despite nearly 50 % of the schools have undergone emergency repairs in the last 5 years, more than 30 % requires
urgent maintenance not only due to aging reasons but also because
of the poor quality of the recent constructions.
The current interest in school buildings, not only in Italy but
also in Europe, is primarily related to two aspects: the high level
of energy consumption of this sector, and the inadequate level of
comfort (both thermal and air quality). Numerous studies have
been carried out to determine both the real dimension of the problem and to propose technically and economically feasible solutions,
while the governments have established tougher regulations and
standards that new and retrotted constructions have to comply with. The main problems in schools, as pointed out by many
authors, deal with not only the building envelope and system features, but with the management as well.
Some years ago, Antonini et al. [2] carried out a survey on a sample of 50 schools in the North-East Region of Veneto, Italy. Schools
were assessed as for the energy performance, through analytical
calculation methods, and for the environmental quality, through
experimental detections. It was found that schools in Veneto use
annually between 250 kWh m2 and 350 kWh m2 (290 kWh m2
in average) including hot water for the gymnasiums and the canteens. About one third of this use is attributable to heat losses
through the building envelope. With respect to the heating systems, in addition to the oversized heat generators found in almost
all the buildings of the sample, the same analysis identied problems, only detectable through in situ measurements, related to an
incorrect positioning of the internal thermostatic probes or of the
heating elements or to a general bad management of the heating
system. Similarly, Filippn [3], starting from a study on 15 Argentinian schools, reported a number of issues of management and
control related to the maintenance, the appropriate positioning of
thermostats, the identication of critical areas, the monitoring of
abnormal loads and the training of staff and students in the proper
use of the facilities.
Nomenclature
Symbols
A
C
EP
F
H
h
HDD
HDH
K
Q
R2
S
T
U
V
VIF
area (m2 )
referred to cluster or centroid
normalized energy performance (Wh m3 K1 h1 )
F-test statistic ()
capacity of the heating system (kW)
hour (h)
heating degree days (K d)
heating degree hours (K h)
number of partitions for K-means algorithm
heating demand (Wh)
index of determination ()
dissipating surface (m2 )
temperature ( C)
thermal transmittance (W m2 K1 )
conditioned volume (m3 )
variance ination factor ()
Subscripts
0
initial
adj
adjusted
env, gl
referred to transparent envelope
referred to opaque envelope
env, o
external
ext
f
referred to oor
oor in thermal contact with the ground
fg
int
internal
k
referred to the kth cluster
occupancy
occ
r
referred to the roof
vw
vertical walls exposed to the external environment
referred to the windows
win
161
A large database of information for 85 buildings that represent all of the Province-owned educational building stock has been
0.8
30
0.4
14
10
3
0.2
0
>70
60-70
50-60
10
40-50
20
0.6
25
Cumulative frequency
40
30-40
20-30
50
10-20
4-10
<4
Frequency
162
19
20
10
0
10
0.4
0.2
0
(b) 50
30
30
0.6
16
0.4
>16
14-16
12-14
10-12
8-10
0.2
40
0.8
29
16
20-25
15-20
3
10-15
<5
5-10
10
0.4
11
0
1
>30
20
0.6
25-30
30
0.2
Cumulative frequency
50
>4
3.5-4
3-3.5
1
2.5-3
0.2
0
(b)
Frequency
14
1
6-8
<2
4-6
10
10
0.4
10
1.5-2.0
0.8
17
<1.5
40
Cumulative frequency
2-4
Frequency
50
0.6
24
20
(a)
0.8
2.0-2.5
Frequency
40
For each school of the sample, some more information about
the thermal transmittance of the structures is available. Data
were elaborated in order to obtain an area weighted average
value of thermal transmittance for the external opaque envelope (vertical walls, oor, roof) and windows. In Fig. 5a and b
the frequency distribution of the average transmittance of the
Cumulative frequency
20
Cumulative frequency
0.6
>1.5
30
1.3-1.5
0.8-0.9
>0.9
0.8
1.1-1.3
0.2
0.7-0.8
0.6-0.7
0.5-0.6
1
0.4-0.5
<0.2
5
0.3-0.4
10
0.4
40
0.9-1.1
19
20
0.6
0.7-0.9
28
30
50
0.5-0.7
0.8
<0.5
40
163
(a)
Frequency
Cumulative frequency
50
0.2-0.3
Frequency
Awin / Af [%]
Fig. 4. Frequency of buildings by the percentage of windows area over the opaque
envelope area (a) and over the total oor area (b).
164
Fig. 6. Heating degree hours (HDH20, occ ) for each school during heating period of the scholastic year 20112012.
As shown in Eq. (1), HDH20, occ are calculated as the sum of all
the hourly differences between the external air temperature and
a supposed internal setpoint temperature of 20 C during every
occupancy hour of the heating period.
HDH20,occ = (Tint Text ) h
(1)
In Fig. 6 the results of this calculation are plotted, showing that the
range of values present in this group of buildings is quite ample, as
it goes from around 8500 to 25 500 K h.
2.4. Heating systems and energy consumptions
As regards the heating system, most of the schools use natural gas boilers (87 %) while the others use heating oil fueled
boilers. Before 2012, all the boilers were traditional noncondensing ones. During 2012, the traditional boiler has been replaced in
some schools with a condensing one. As for the value of the boiler
heating capacity: 16 % have boilers below 300 kW, 40 % between
300 kW and 600 kW, 27 % between 600 kW and 900 kW, and 17 %
more than 900 kW. In order to compare the energy performance of
schools, the energy consumption of each of them has been normalized with respect to its heated volume and heating degree hours.
Fig. 7 shows the trend of the energy index, which is very variable:
from 0.53 Wh m3 K1 h1 to 8.41 Wh m3 K1 h1 .
3. Method
As specied in the introduction, the rst step regards the selection of the quantities to describe the sample and then to perform the
clustering. The annual energy consumption of each building can be
correlated to some of them, such as those describing the geometry,
the composition of the envelope, the characteristics of the conditioning system, the control schedules and the weather conditions.
The inuence of each quantity on the heating demand is clearly different and the highest correlated parameters and variables can be
used to characterize effectively the sample of buildings. Since the
aim of the work is to group schools with similar characteristics and
correlations between them and the energy consumption, we need
to dene which variables are the most suitable to characterize the
heating demand and which ones can describe the properties of the
buildings set. As showed in previous paragraph, in order to make
the energy consumption for heating (Q) easier to compare and, consequently, the school easier to split into homogeneous groups, it
has been normalized coherently with the Italian National Guidelines for the Energy Labelling of Buildings [23] and EN 15217:2007.
Thus, Q have been divided by value of the conditioned volume (V)
and the heating degree hours (HDH20, occ ) calculated according to
the approach explained before. In this way, weather, size of building
and occupancy have been removed from the list of the descriptive
165
Fig. 7. Annual energy consumption per unit heated volume and per unit degree hour (scholastic year 20112012).
Table 1
Results of the 924 combinations with 6 predictors: top-10 congurations selected for the rst clustering and parameters considered for each group.
ID
Predictors
Avw
Ar
Af
Af-g
Aenv, op
Aenv, gl
Awin /Avw
Awin /Af
Aenv, gl /Aenv, op
U
S/V
H
235
825
787
x
x
311
902
270
x
x
x
x
843
53
304
307
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
2
Radj
0.275
F value
p-value
VIF > 10
4.59
<0.01
0.265
0.261
0.259
0.257
0.255
0.254
0.254
0.254
0.253
4.43
<0.01
4.35
<0.01
4.32
<0.01
4.28
<0.01
4.24
<0.01
4.23
<0.01
4.23
<0.01
4.23
<0.01
4.22
<0.01
166
Table 2
Results of the rst clustering of the 58 schools and the subsequent second regression in each cluster. In gray color the improved regressions.
C1
C2
C3
ID
235
825
787
311
902
270
843
53
304
307
R2 adj
F value
p-value
N
R2 adj
F value
p-value
N
R2 adj
F value
p-value
N
0.399
3.88
0.01
27
0.165
1.76
0.17
24
0.400
3.44
0.02
23
0.326
3.09
0.03
27
0.542
3.36
0.08
13
0.455
2.39
0.21
11
0.154
1.99
0.10
34
0.802
9.76
<0.01
14
0.094
1.63
0.17
37
0.355
2.92
0.04
22
0.341
3.32
0.02
28
0.585
4.76
0.02
17
0.450
2.37
0.21
11
0.168
1.97
0.11
30
0.461
4.56
0.01
26
0.151
1.68
0.19
24
0.543
3.18
0.11
12
0.166
2.43
0.04
44
0.695
4.79
0.08
11
0.565
4.68
0.01
18
0.058
1.29
0.31
29
0.486
4.30
0.01
22
0.478
2.52
0.19
11
0.02
1.08
0.41
25
to their adjusted index of determination and the rst 10 con2 were selected as coordinates to
gurations with the highest Radj
perform clustering analysis (Table 1). Each combination of 6 parameters has been identied by an ID-number. Analyzing the 10 best
groups of 6 predictors, we can see that adjusted index of determination, the Fisher F-values and the p-values are all similar. No
multi-collinearity issues are detected. These linear models, even if
statistically signicant with respect to the chosen level and without multi-collinearity, could not be used because the adjusted index
of determination is very low. This conrms the importance of the
identication of homogeneous groups to improve the models t. As
regards the involved predictors, it can be noticed that the area of the
vertical walls, the area of the surface in thermal contact with the
ground, the average thermal transmittance, the shape factor and
the capacity of the heating system are common to most of models
(U, S/V and H to all of them). What differentiates the models is often
the variable descriptive of the window area.
The best 10 groups have been used for the rst clustering. In
order to assess the improvement given by adoption of these combinations of predictors within the K-means method, they have been
used to develop new linear regressive models starting from the elements of each cluster (Table 2). In Table 2, in gray those clusters and
combinations for which the linear regressive model elaborated for
a given cluster is statistically signicant with respect to a level of
10 % and has an adjusted index of determination larger than the
one determined for the whole dataset with the same predictors. All
Table 3
2
(Best model) calculated for each cluster. In red the model variables with VIF > 10. In gray
Groups of predictors used in clustering vs. groups of variables with an optimized Radj
color the improved regressions.
Cluster
ID
Predictors
Avw
Ar
Af
Af-g
Aenv,op
Aenv,gl
Awin Avw
Awin Af
Aenv,gl Aenv,op
U
S/V
H
R2 adj
F statistic
p-value
N
C1
C2
Cluster
304
Best model
162
Cluster
304
x
x
C3
Best model
629
C3.1
C3.2
Cluster
304
Best model
403
Cluster
403
Best model
396
Cluster
403
Best model
457
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
0.695
4.79
0.08
11
x
0.988
140.59
<0.01
x
x
x
x
x
0.565
4.68
0.01
18
x
x
x
0.676
6.91
<0.01
x
x
x
0.058
1.29
0.31
29
x
x
0.486
5.41
<0.01
0.891
13.21
0.03
10
0.989
130.29
<0.01
0.162
1.58
0.24
19
x
x
x
x
0.369
2.75
0.06
167
168
Table 4
Building closest to the centroid of each cluster.
Predictors
Avw
Ar
Af-g
Aenv, op
Aenv, gl
U
S/V
Awin /Avw
Awin /Af
Af
H
Aenv, gl /Aenv, op
EP
Units
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
W m2 K1
m2
kW
Wh m3 K1 h1
CLUSTER 1
CN 042-01
CLUSTER 2
VB 049-01
CLUSTER 3.1
CV 091-01
CLUSTER 3.2
MB 083-02
CLUSTER 3
CV 046-01
5111.66
5503.00
5503.00
10 328.23
1842.26
0.82
0.33
0.36
0.18
10 185.00
1420.00
0.18
1.74
2080.31
1720.60
1762.00
2027.16
738.31
0.95
0.38
0.35
0.17
4474.00
378.00
0.36
0.62
1773.71
1350.00
1341.00
1881.26
508.23
1.07
0.38
0.29
0.16
3205.00
644.00
0.27
1.77
2217.54
1612.00
1612.00
3829.54
493.28
1.27
0.41
0.22
0.16
3104.00
822.00
0.13
2.48
2178.25
1866.00
1861.00
3983.55
576.34
1.09
0.42
0.26
0.15
3739.00
283.00
0.14
1.51
169
Fig. 9. Diagrams in parallel axis representing the coordinates (normalized parameters) of the schools belonging to each cluster and the centroid coordinates of clusters C1 ,
C2 , C3 , C3.1 and C3.2 . The gray dots in each graph x-axes indicates the parameters used for the optimized regression.
170
5. Conclusion
In this work, we discussed the problem of classifying and modeling the existing building stock and identifying a limited number
of representative buildings in order to develop strategies for an
extensive refurbishment according to the cost-optimal approach
suggested in the Commission Delegated Regulation [12]. We studied a sample of almost 60 schools in the province of Treviso, Italy,
and adopted a modied K-means approach as methodology for
their classication. Multiple Linear Regression techniques have been
used to drive and validate the cluster analysis, demonstrating some
potential to determine the classication and leading the clustering
strategy.
The main aspects of the proposed method have been the following ones:
(1) Starting from a multi-dimensional domain composed by all the
descriptive quantities of the schools sample and correlated with
their normalized energy consumption, it has been possible to
reduce the variables from 12 to the main 6 ones.
(2) Once the best group of quantities has been dened, the clustering has been performed and the results validated by studying
2 ) and
the variation of the adjusted index of determination (Radj
other statistics, such as p-values, F-values and variance ination factors, considered for diagnostic purposes. The method
has been iterated on more levels, until clustering was no more
meaningful and veriable.
(3) The data in the clusters have been studied and described
with optimized regressions. For some clusters, such as C1 , C2
and C3.1 , a good data tting has been achieved by the developed linear models: the adjusted index of determination is
almost 0.7 for C2 and more than 0.9 for C1 and C3.1 . However, some diagnostics revealed statistical multi-collinearity
issues, in particular for the sub-clusters and for the optimized
regressions. This underlined the impossibility of robust use of
the found models for extrapolation and the necessity to further investigate the data with alternative approaches, such
as the principal components regressions or some non-linear
methods. Otherwise, the dataset should be populated with
more points (not necessary with more buildings but with more
annual energy consumption data) to allow for more robust
ndings.
(4) Even if there are some limitations in the extent of the models outside the dataset, homogeneous groups and models have
been properly dened and, subsequently also their centroids.
The schools closest to those centroids have been determined.
Their oor area ranges from around 3100 m2 (C3.2 ) to more than
10 000 m2 (C1 ), with an installed heating capacity from less
than 400 kW (C2 ) to more than 1400 kW (C1 ), an average thermal transmittance of the envelope from 0.82 W m2 K1 (C1 )
to 1.27 W m2 K1 (C3.2 ), a S/V ratio from 0.33 (C1 ) to 0.41 (C3.2 )
and a ratio between transparent and opaque envelope from 0.13
(C3.2 ) to 0.36 (C2 ).
After the identication of the representative schools, it is now
possible to classify the schools according to a priority intervention list, to apply the cost-optimal approach and to nd
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the Province of Treviso (Provincia di Treviso) for making the schools database available for this
research.
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