The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD IV) highlights the importance of ensuring adequate levels of indoor comfort and air quality in the context of energy retrofit, addressing building energy audits toward energy efficiency solutions while enhancing occupants' environmental conditions. In this framework, the present article analyses the energy implications of potential retrofit strategies for a case study building, previously subject to extensive thermal comfort monitoring, by applying the dynamic hourly calculation method given by UNI EN ISO 52016-1:2018. Starting from results of the monitoring campaign, the building energy demand was estimated by modeling different indoor thermal zones, to obtain a more detailed representation of the building thermal behaviour. On this basis, several retrofit scenarios, focused on building envelope and Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, were assessed and compared in terms of their impact on overall energy performance as well as on indoor thermal comfort conditions. The results show that the proposed measures can lead to different impacts on building energy demand, primary energy consumption and thermal comfort conditions. Overall, the study highlights that the integration of comfort analysis into energy audits can support the definition of more balanced and effective retrofit strategies, improving energy performance and occupants' satisfaction.
Iatauro et al. (Thu,) studied this question.