Bottom-up Lumped-parameters Thermodynamic Modelling of the Italian Residential Building Stock: Assessment of High-resolution Heat Demand Profiles

Abstract

Final energy demand of residential sector accounts for about 25 % of the overall final consumption in the European region, mainly driven by space heating, space cooling, domestic hot water and cooking, which represent about 85 % of the total. Definition of effective policies towards decarbonisation of heat demand have been hindered so far by the lack of temporally-and spatially-detailed heat demand profiles, a key input for energy system optimisation models. This study tries to fill this gap by designing and validating a bottom-up thermodynamic lumped-parameters model for the Italian building stock. More specifically, the model grounds on a resistance-capacitance thermodynamic model, defined for: four building archetypes, five periods of construction and six building typologies corresponding to different climate zones. The model is applied to Italy and results classified based respectively on regional and hourly space and time resolutions. The model is validated based on temporally aggregated regional data. The model is used to assess the consequences of alternative building refurbishment/new construction scenarios towards Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEBs), defined according to official Italian policy strategies: for each scenario, the change in heat demand and the change in share of appropriate domestic heating supply technologies are evaluated. Finally, sensitivity analysis is performed on the most critical parameters of the model.