Identification of Reliable Renovation Solutions for the Swiss Building Stock in Context of Minergie Requirements

Abstract

The master thesis has emerged in the context of research related to the building refurbishment goals of Swiss Energy Strategy 2050. For the study, several construction periods are analysed and archetypes are constructed using the existing literature and provided data. Different renovation strategies for the constructed archetypes are developed in order to reach Minergie certification with Minergie easy renovation systems. Archetypes retrofitted according to these renovation strategies are then analysed in terms of Minergie index, life cycle cost and life cycle assessment using a python code. Moreover, in order to be able to define the most reliable renovation solution, uncertainty quantification is performed using Matlab based framework called UQLab. The goal of this thesis is the identification of the most reliable renovation scenarios for the Swiss building stock in order to reach Minergie certification.

The results show that Minergie easy renovation system 1 with heat pump has the lowest life cycle cost (LCC), life cycle analysis (LCA), Minergie index results and uncertainties. They also show that the importance of the operational energy is outstanding on the LCA, just by implementing a heat pump, lower LCA values than a fully insulated building with oil burner can be reached. According to the simulations, the results of Minergie system 2 and 3 has very similar results, while their Minergie index is higher than system 1, their LCA and LCC are lower. Also the more the building is renovated, the less the uncertainties become.

According to simulations, as expected, oldest archetype has the highest LCA, LCC and heating demand while the youngest has the lowest. In addition, outdoor temperature has a big impact not only on heating demand but also on LCC and LCA and uncertainties. Results of an archetype located in colder climate has similar results with an older archetype, which has a poorer performance but located in warmer climate.