During the case assessments, observations and comments on SRI services and functionality levels were made by the study team and participating specialists. They were later analysed, filtered and consolidated, and the most important points are listed in table 20. Most of the notes concern compatibility of SRI with regional technical building system features and designs, while some apply generally.
Table 20. Comments on the SRI catalogue made by the study team and external specialists during the assessment meetings.
Service Observation
Heating-1a. Heat emission
control Variable room temperature based on occupancy detec-tion was considered hard to implement in cold climates due to heat stored in building structures.
Heating-2a. Heat generator
control (all except heat pumps) Appears to be redundant in buildings with direct heat exchangers from DH supply to internal distribution network.
Heating-4. Flexibility and
grid interaction According to Timonen (2018), DH demand flexibil-ity would not be profitable enough for the local DH operator at this time.
DHW-1a–2b. (Several) Not assessed in any building because DHW storage is not necessary with DH (Finnish Energy 2014).
Ventilation. (Domain) There is no service for ventilation energy demand flex-ibility, although functionality was implemented in sev-eral case buildings with virtual power plant services.
Ventilation-2c. Heat recov-ery control: prevention of over-heating
The description was deemed unclear. Additionally, SFS-EN 15232-1 (2017) includes a criterion for heat recovery icing protection, which is considered relevant in cold climates but not included in SRI.
Ventilation-6. Reporting
in-formation regarding IAQ Detailed real-time CO2 level reporting to occupants was suspected to cause unnecessary concern.
DE-1. Window solar shading
control Automatic sun shading was considered unconventional and generally unnecessary in Finland.
DE-2. Window open/close control, combined with HVAC system
Opening windows in buildings with controlled ventil-ation was mentioned to be detrimental for indoor air quality, especially due to outdoor PM.
Electricity-3–4. (Several) On-site storage and load optimization were considered unnecessary in all case buildings because local energy production capacity was below base load.
Service “Heating-2a” assesses heat generator control, and according to triaging guidelines in the SRI catalogue it should be assessed if district heating systems are present. However, buildings using DH usually have direct heat exchangers from network to internal heat distribution systems (Finnish Energy 2014). Because currently the DH network operator fully controls supply fluid temperatures, it is not possible to control off-site heat generation facilities from buildings. Thus, this service is considered redundant in buildings connected to broad DH networks.
Several case buildings had ventilation energy demand flexibility functionalities, which were not identified by SRI in the ventilation domain. Mechanical ventilation is the second largest energy consumer in Northern non-residential buildings (Verbeke et al. 2020, p. 124) and therefore has notable energy demand flexibility potential. This led to concerns that the obtained SRI scores do not reflect the true energy demand flexibility capabilities of the assessed buildings.
Additionally, concerns regarding unnecessary CO2level reporting were extended to other reporting functions. SRI services appear to be defined on the assumption that occupants should see as much real-time data as possible, which was suspected to cause unnecessary concern and confusion among occupants in some cases. Another option would be to provide only relevant information to occupants, while keeping all data available to building managers and technical personnel for diagnostics and maintenance. In case of CO2level reporting, the solution could be a simple “traffic light” indicator with sufficiently high but safe alert limits, which still provides the information occupants need.
8 FURTHER APPLICABILITY OF SRI
The case study provided means to assess whether SRI results could be further applied to other purposes, such as building energy performance development. The applicability analysis is performed through analysing how improvement possibilities could be identified from SRI results and which kind of tools would be needed. Ideally, SRI should encourage relevant and effective technical improvements that:
• improve functionality in the key EPBD functions (energy performance, adaptability to user needs and energy flexibility)
• tangibly improve energy, financial or environmental performance
• positively affect the achieved SRI score.
Essentially, SRI only assesses smartness of buildings and ignores more conventional yet important energy performance factors such as insulation quality and appliance efficiency.
Thus, the most profitable energy performance investments might not be related to smartness at all, which is important to keep in mind.
Two potential SRI implementation paths are already identified as linking SRI to the cur-rently mandatory energy performance certificate (EPC) system or to building construction and renovation work (Verbeke et al. 2020, p. 154). In these cases, SRI could be thought as a complement to EPC, extending specific energy demand evaluation to technical func-tionality. Presumably, SRI would become rather quickly widespread with any mandatory implementation (Verbeke et al. 2020, p. 183).
On the other hand, mandatory SRI assessment could lead to negative reception due to the associated cost and effort (Verbeke et al. 2020, p. 183), resulting in incomplete realization of its potential. Therefore, a voluntary scheme is considered a better option to allow the public to freely discover the benefits SRI offers. It could also create broader interest in using SRI as a building development tool, not only as a mandatory classification procedure.
8.1 SRI as a building development tool
Achieving long-term aims of SRI, especially measurable financial and environmental benefits (Verbeke et al. 2020), requires realization of investments. One effective route could be to use SRI as a voluntary building development tool.
The final SRI score was not seen as a sufficient basis for building energy performance development. Rather, its value was recognized as an indicative classification, comparison or marketing tool. In the building development context, more detailed examination of score components is needed, which can be performed using sub-score matrices. For more high-level analysis, aggregated impact or domain scores could be sufficient. The following approach is suggested as a starting point:
1. Observe the SRI domain-impact result matrix with sub-scores for each combination.
If improvements in specific domains or impacts are desired, concentrate especially on those sub-scores. Otherwise, select domain-impact pairs with the lowest scores.
2. Using the SRI catalogue, trace which services affect scores of the selected pairs. The simplest method is to compare selected and maximum functionality levels in the overview sheet. A more advanced method would be to explore the impact criterion point matrices (as in table 10).
3. Evaluate SRI score improvement potential of the services by increasing their func-tionality levels. After each modification, observe effects in the scoring sheet.
4. If effects on scores are satisfactory, consider the technical improvements that should be made to fulfil the requirements of the selected functionality levels.
This approach is based on the assumption that technical solutions justifying SRI level improvements produce real financial and environmental effects. However, analysis of the case study suggests that this might not be the case in all services due to climatic or other factors, and therefore development suggestions derived from SRI results should always be subjected to further energy, financial and environmental evaluation. Moreover, estimating impacts of subjective impact criteria, such as “comfort” or “health and well-being” is more challenging especially in the short term.
Tracing the relevant services according to the approach could be made easier and faster by developing an interactive tool which identifies the services distributing points for chosen domain-impact sub-scores. Additionally, the tool could list development suggestions and illustrate their effects to scores. A draft of this kind of tool is presented in figure 19.
However, actual development of the tool is outside the scope of this thesis.
Energy efficiency Maintenance and fault prediction Comfort Convenience Health and well- being Information to occupants Energy flexibility and storage
Heating 71 % 80 % 83 % 73 % 80 % 100 % 36 %
Services affecting the selected score Level Points
Control of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) operation 0/0 0/0 (not relevant)
Generator control for cooling 2/3 1/3 (a)
Sequencing of different cooling generators 0/0 0/0 (not relevant)
Flexibility and grid interaction 1/4 0/3 (b)
Development suggestions Point change Score change
(a) 1/3 → 3/3 (b) 0/3 → 3/3
Implement self-learning cooling system control (a) 0/3 → 1/3 17 → 33 % 17 → 100 % Implement grid signal based control in cooling system
Figure 19.Draft of a SRI point tracing tool based on the SRI domain-impact score matrix. Red gradient colouring is applied to focus attention on the lowest scores. Scores can be clicked to backtrace services affecting them. The view contains SRI catalogue-based development suggestions and their score improvement potentials.
In principle, the tool could also be extended to perform the subsequent energy, environ-mental and financial evaluations at least roughly. For instance, the tool could use current energy use and cost data to statistically estimate savings achievable with the suggestions.
This approach would properly link technological capabilities to tangible benefits.
Finally, it must still be noted that SRI does not assess all available or installed energy performance functions. Rather, it describes the technical readiness potentially enabling better energy performance. Because improvements based purely on SRI scores without further evaluation could lead to ineffective results, SRI should be used as a steering device to suggest development areas to focus on.