www.energieplus-lesite.be
(The Energie Plus site is only available in French)As a decision support tool, the Energie+ website has been freely accessible online for about 15 years. It is an information tool developed by Architecture & Climat (UCLouvain) and carried out within the framework of the Responsible Energy Program of the Walloon Region. It is therefore aimed primarily at energy managers, but also at building managers or designers, installers, architects, etc. It aims to help tertiary building managers control their energy expenditure by providing information as simple and understandable as accurate and complete.
In order to carry out their mission, managers need to have a complete overview of energy efficiency before undertaking a new renovation or construction and to think about new investments. This is why Energy+ provides, in different ways, broad information on the techniques and their components from an energy efficiency and comfort point of view, with a focus on renovation, construction, energy management or outreach in non-residential buildings.
The “Decision Support” is the main and most important part of the site as it allows energy managers to really influence the consumption and costs of their institution.
It enables decisions to be taken and concrete actions to be taken to improve energy efficiency in general or in part in the institution’s buildings.It provides essential analysis and advice depending on the phases of the project. Its content is, in fact, integrated into four sections titled with action verbs to designate the phases of an energy-related project: Manage, Evaluate, Improve and Design.
The “Manage” section provides information on managing an existing facility to ensure energy efficiency and comfort. For this purpose, it gives details on the settings, maintenance and cleaning of a system.
The purpose of the “Assess” section is to provide information on the energy quality assessment and comfort of an existing facility. It makes it possible to analyse the current situation, to check the benefits of a renovation, to evaluate the technical and economic potential of an improvement, to identify the comfort to be achieved, etc.
The “Improve” section presents a series of measures to increase the quality, efficiency and comfort of an existing facility.It provides concrete information on the renovation and replacement of building systems or components.
The “Design” section provides the keys and criteria for selecting the components, sizing and implementing an efficient system and achieving a new facility that incorporates energy quality and comfort concepts.
“Resources” provide theoretical information and are used as tools and supports for decision support.
The Energy+ resources are a theoretical and technical support for decision support.In fact, this part allows you to learn more about building systems and their components, to understand the physical concepts that occur in a building or in a system, but also to consult data, measurement techniques or illustrations of exemplary renovations.The resources are divided into eight sections:
- The “Techniques” section which describes existing systems, their components, qualities and management;
- The “Theories” section which provides a theoretical explanation of the physical concepts and phenomena related to the building and its techniques;
- The “Calculations” section which includes spreadsheets to calculate the energy cost or cost-effectiveness of a system, but also to concretely apply certain equations of building physics;
- The "regulations" section which refers to certain standards and requirements of the Walloon Government, the Belgian State or the European Council;
- The “Case Studies” section which illustrates, with details, forecasts and feedback, examples of relevant retrofit or design projects that improve energy efficiency or energy efficiency;
- The “Measures” section which describes devices and methods and recommendations for obtaining a good measure of physical variables;
- The “Data” section which provides many values, mainly prescriptive requirements, necessary for the sizing, calculation and cost-effectiveness study of a project;
- Finally, the Glossary section contains a list of technical terms and definitions for the most commonly used words.
The version of Energy+ now online is number 13!
Version 13 is not only more adapted to the habits of consultation and navigation, but also the sharing and interaction of current users.Multiple improvements have been made such as a redesign of the signalétique, the addition of a contextualized summary on the left, a more efficient search tool, tools for sharing and interacting with site publishers and an online glossary.