Smart Energy Management for a Sustainable Built Environment

Dear Colleagues,

The energy demand of buildings represents a large share of the total energy demand worldwide, thus, it is of paramount importance to promote and achieve a sustainable built environment. In particular, improving the energy efficiency and exploiting the energy flexibility that buildings can provide improves the overall efficiency of the energy system. The built environment interacts with different energy networks, such as the electricity grid, natural gas grid and thermal networks. In general, buildings can be coupled to multi-carrier energy systems and their inner flexibility can be exploited to optimize the overall energy system in order to make better use of the available resources and achieve a sustainable energy system. There are different kinds of energy demand in buildings, which can be mainly divided into electricity and thermal demand. The energy demand of buildings can be reduced by means of different actions aimed at increasing their energy efficiency. Furthermore, part of the demand is due to the so-called deferrable loads, which can be shifted in time without altering the service provided to the end user (e.g., refrigerators, dishwashers and thermostatically controlled loads).

The focus of this Special Issue concerns the smart management of energy demand in the built environment, which can be realized in different ways, e.g., by refurbishment, use of higher performing energy production devices, introduction of energy storage systems, and proper control strategies. All of these actions can indeed make buildings interact with the energy production system in a more effective way, leading to a more sustainable world.

Dr. Alessia Arteconi
Guest Editor

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