The Maintenance Support Building, Technical University of Crete (TUC)

In addition to thermal-comfort problems for the building users, based on energy audits and simulation results the energy consumption of the specific building is quite high at 130 kWh/m2a. The TUC building is unspectacular in most ways and in that sense typical of many existing office buildings in Greece and elsewhere. It has a glass roof (that can be used for buoyancy-driven natural ventilation) and manually-controlled shading devices and windows. The demonstration phase in the PEBBLE project is going to proceed in two steps: in the first phase, “obvious” low-cost modifications are going to be applied to the building; in the second phase, the following will be installed: a 2.5 kW wind-generator, a 4 KW PV array, automatically controlled shading devices and windows. These systems will be installed before the PEBBLE demonstration starts at the partner’s own expenses and effort.

Many existing buildings suffer from thermal comfort problems and high energy consumption. “Obvious” low-cost modifications, along with ICT-supported intelligent usage of moderate-capacity renewable energy-generation systems, can help EU attain its “20 20 by 2020” targets (i.e. 20% reduction in GHG and 20% share of renewable energies in EU energy consumption). Also it can help improve on energy efficiency of buildings by up to 30%, yielding energy savings of up to 12% (even more with the installation of renewable energy sources).

Exterior photos

Interior photos