ECOCENTRE Project: Monitoring energy in retrofitted buildings.

The Ispra Establishment of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), was setup in the late fifties. In 1993 a project, called EcoCentre Ispra, was set in motion with financial support from the European Parliament which wanted to demonstrate the feasibility of improving the environmental impact of an ageing research area according to criteria of sustainability. The most important actions undertaken so far have sought to reduce the site's energy consumption, through both retrofitting and new, low energy construction. In this paper are described two major retrofits. The first is that of the Centre's Canteen (Mensa) in which the innovative aim of the design is to provide summer comfort by means of natural ventilation instead of mechanical cooling. The second is the "ESTI Technological Hall" (16000m(3)) in which a 390m(2) "Canadian Solar Wall" is used to preheat intake air in winter. The retrofits consist also of other low energy technologies that have been integrated in the project design. In order to demonstrate technically the energy improvements of the project, the efficiency and reliability of retrofitting measures and performances of buildings components must be accurately monitored and verified. As a result, special building components (Solar "Canadian" Wall, Solar Collectors, Exhaust heat recovery, Solar water storage, Openings for natural ventilation, and Building Energy Management System) have been monitored, analysed for their contribution to the global energy consumption. Another very important aspect of the project is the development of acceptance procedures based on monitoring results and their viability to a more general context.