Assessment Methodology Building Energy Ratings (AMBER);

Project Description

The AMBER project aims to provide a set of guidelines to minimise the performance gap in A-rated buildings, complemented by design best practices and user comfort and wellness recommendations. These guidelines will support compliance policies to ensure that design, construction and operation of A-rated buildings achieve high energy efficiency while supporting high levels of user comfort. The project will collect BER and sensor data from 100 domestic and 25-40 non-domestic A-rated buildings recruited by ? Cualann and RIAI, to analyse power loads and indoor environmental quality at 5 minute resolution for one year in each building, taking into account the differences in use and operation of different building types. Energy and IEQ data will be paired with post-occupancy surveying to carry out a set of in-depth analyses, and made available to SEAI via dashboards for 12 months after the project. A sensitivity analysis will be carried out to review NEAP/DEAP methodologies and identify key parameters which affect compliance, to develop guidelines to minimise the performance gap. Indoor Environmental Quality data will be reviewed to generate recommendations to expand consideration of user wellness for the BER methodology. Finally a set of guidelines will be developed to support the holistic consideration of energy efficiency in all design aspects. The final package of recommendations will be developed for maximum replicability within the Irish context through feedback loops across the value chain, and disseminated at national and European level to generate a step change in the current design and construction practice of A-rated buildings.