Investigating the Impact of Tower Renewal Retrofits on the Energy Performance of Multi-Unit Residential Buildings

This project uses weather and building utility data to determine the actual (rather than theoretical) performance of building retrofits.

Status: Current

Research themes: Energy and GHG emissions

Research areas: Building design and retrofits for performance improvement

Project Objective

The goal of this research is to determine the actual change in building natural gas and electricity consumption due to tower renewal retrofits. This information can be used for benchmarking, cost benefit analysis and determining trends in building EUI improvement due to building features.

Approach

This project uses outdoor temperature from historical weather data, monthly electricity and natural gas consumption from utility bills, and retrofit dates in approximately 30 high-rise multi-unit residential buildings to determine the weather normalized utility consumption improvement due to retrofit. This research uses ASHRAE Guideline 14 for weather normalization and various statistical analyses to determine trends in energy improvement as a result of building and retrofit characteristics.

Findings

This research will determine how effective tower renewal retrofits are in reducing utility consumption, and the corresponding cost and greenhouse gas emissions. This can be used to benchmark against the performance of the Ontario building stock. The determined utility consumption will be compared to current and future standards to examine the feasibility of the examined retrofits in meeting current and future performance standards. Building meta data will be used to determine the factors which influence relative success of retrofits.