Thermal and Economic Efficiency of Progressive Retrofit Strategies for School Buildings by a Statistical Analysis based Tool

Design alternatives in air conditioned buildings may be easily compared just by summing the hourly consumption of primary energy, while quantitative approachs for bioclimatic design strategies are difficult to be assessed and compared. A actively heated and passively cooled school building is considered as an application field of a novel methodology to promote an informed choice about the retrofit strategies to be adopted for buildings, defined as the Gained Comfort Cost (GCC). A functional and significant unit (i.e. a classroom), is used to test different energy retrofit solutions and their performances were compared with a baseline, in terms of the capacity to reduce the indoor air temperature variation. The novel methodology is a visual tool allowing to understand the “distance” of indoor conditions from comfort; the retrofit strategies are promoted to reduce this distance considering however the associated costs (LCC) to deal with actual feasibility.