CLIMAMED VII. Mediterranean Congress of Climatization, Istanbul, 3-4 October, 2013 TURKISH SOCIETY OF HVAC & SANITARY ENGINEERS ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 504 DESIGN AND VERIFICATION OF A ZERO ENERGY BUILDING: EVALUATION OF REAL ENERGY PERFORMANCE AND COMPARISON WITH A TAILORED CALCULATION Alfonso Capozzoli 1 , Luca Berra 2 , Roberto Russo 3 and Vincenzo Corrado 1 1 TEBE Research Group, Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy 2 Edilclima srl, Borgomanero (NO), Italy 3 Energy consultant, Torino, Italy Corresponding email: alfonso.capozzoli@polito.it SUMMARY In this paper an example of a “nearly-zero-energy building” in northern Italy is presented. A critical analysis of the technologies design, both for increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy production is carried out. The available data from an energy monitoring campaign during the seasons 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 are presented and discussed in order to evaluate the real energy performance of the building. The data of the monitoring campaign are also used to assess the real operational conditions of the building in order to perform a tailored energy calculation. Thus the calculation is performed using both monthly quasi-steady-state method and an hourly dynamic model. The simulation results are compared with the real building energy monitored data to get a “validation” of the model. INTRODUCTION The theme of Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs) has been receiving wide international attention for a few years, till it became a part of the energy policy in several countries, and is now considered as the target for the design of buildings in the near future. In the recast of the EU Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD) [1], it is specified that by the end of 2020 all the new buildings shall be “nearly zero energy buildings” (NZEB). Considering that in Europe buildings are responsible for the use of about 40% of the whole energy in the continent, an increase of the number of ZEBs (or NZEB) appears to be a very interesting strategy in order to reduce the energy use. Although the number of ZEBs or NZEBs has started getting greater both in Italy and the rest of Europe, hitherto an agreed definition of the Zero Energy Buildings concept has not been identified, nor a common calculation methodology has been approved yet. According to Sartori et al. [2], many studies focused on a definition of the ZEB: even though a common definition was not identified from a scientific point of view, an accepted generic definition of the ZEB is: “an energy efficient building able to generate electricity, or other energy carriers, from renewable sources in order to compensate for its energy demand”. As shown in Sartori et al. [2] and in A.J. Marszal [3], depending on the scope of the study or the legislation of a country, it is possible to define a ZEB in different ways.