Among the adaptive solutions, phase change material (PCM) technology is one of the most developed, thanks to its capability to mitigate the effects of air temperature fluctuations using thermal energy storage (TES). PCMs belong to the category of passive systems that operate on heat modulation, thanks to latent heat storage (LHS) that can lead to a reduction of heating ventilation air conditioning (HVAC) consumption in traditional buildings and to an improvement of indoor thermal comfort in buildings devoid of HVAC systems. The aim of this work is to numerically analyze and compare the benefits of the implementation of PCMs on the building envelope in both active and passive strategies. To generalize the results, two different EnergyPlus calibrated reference models—the small office and the midrise apartment—were considered, and 25 different European cities in different climatic zones were selected. For these analyses, a PCM plasterboard with a 23 °C melting point was considered in four different thicknesses—12.5, 25, 37.5, and 50 mm. The results obtained highlighted a strong logarithmic correlation between PCM thickness and energy reduction in all the climatic zones, with higher benefits in office buildings and in warmer climates for both strategies.

The high impact of the building sector on global greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, has focused the attention on the energetic behaviour of the built environment. Starting from the second half of 20th century an increasing attention on the insulation of building envelopes has been paid trying to maximize the indoor-outdoor disconnection. Nowadays, one of the main deficiencies of traditional buildings lies in the rivalry between their static behaviour and the dynamic external environment. The increasing awareness that responsive buildings can provide significant improvements in energy efficiency and internal comfort has recently led to a quick spread of innovative technologies, tools, and research topics. The aim of this review is to provide a broad overview of the available and most promising responsive technologies applied to highly performant buildings with a particular focus on building envelopes. Firstly, an introduction of the energy context and of the spread of adaptive technology is presented. Then, an analysis of the existing nomenclature and classification systems is provided to introduce the detailed review of the technologies.

This paper proposes an innovative approach to analyse the energy behaviour of complex kinetic shading systems. Although several studies have analysed this topic, many are focused only on certain aspects or on simple shading systems due to a lack of tools for running reliable energy simulations on complex systems. This study aims to develop and validate a tool based on Python and EnergyPlus that can consider the continuous nature of the energy simulation and analyse complex kinetic systems. Simply providing an EnergyPlus model and a model of the shading configurations, the algorithm provides as output a comparison sheet to evaluate the performance of the system. The paper provides a description of the tools and studies focused on this topic; subsequently, a methodological insight is presented to explain the workflow, its validation, and the algorithm developed. Finally, the algorithm is tested on a case study to analyse a kinetic shading system. Abbreviations: DSF: Dynamic Shading File; EDSM: Equivalent Dynamic Shading Model; EMS: Energy Management System; ESSM: Equivalent Static Shading Model; Gf: Incident irradiance; Gf max: Incident irradiance threshold; PV: Photovoltaic; ST1/2/3: State 1/2/3; SSM: Static Shading Model; SF: Sunlit Fraction; SSF: Static Shading File; To: Outdoor temperature; To max 1/2: Outdoor temperature threshold 1/2; Tsol: Solar transmittance

The urban heat island (UHI) effect is one of the largest climate-related issues concerning our cities due to the localized temperature increase in highly urbanized areas. This paper aims to investigate the impact of UHI mitigation techniques in promoting climate resilience, by reducing urban air temperatures and cooling energy consumption in buildings. To this end, four mitigation solutions regarding the building envelope—green roofs, green walls, cool roofs, and cool walls—were investigated for the city of Bari in Southern Italy and compared with the current baseline scenario. Hence, five scenarios were simulated—using the ENVI-met microclimate software—during three representative summer days, and the resulting microclimate changes were assessed. Based on these analyses, new climate files—one for each scenario—were generated and used as input to run energy simulations in EnergyPlus to estimate the building cooling consumption. Coupling the microclimate and the consumption outcomes, the mitigation strategies were evaluated from both an urban and building point of view. The study shows that urban characteristics, mainly geometry and materials, are crucial for the UHI phenomenon. All the applied technologies seem to be effective. However, green walls proved to be more efficient in reducing outdoor temperatures (1 °C reduction in daily temperatures), while cool walls performed better in reducing cooling energy consumption, with an overall saving of 6% compared to the current scenario.