Challenges and Research Trends of Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

To have a sustainable world, we need to reduce CO² emissions, decrease worldwide energy demand, and significantly lower fossil-fuel energy. The latter can be replaced by electricity generation through renewable sources, and energy efficiency in different sectors should be increased. Buildings are responsible for a significant use of the total energy consumption. Encouraging usage of renewable energy, as well as improvement of energy efficiency, promotes obtaining near zero energy buildings. Energy efficiency should however be achieved while maintaining the occupants in thermal comfort.

To meet these goals, there are a significant number of challenges that need to be addressed. To achieve thermal comfort, we need to discuss the relationships of thermal comfort and indoor air quality and improve the efficiency of HVAC systems. To reduce the electricity consumption, we need to incorporate renewable energy sources, typically solar and wind sources. To deal with the inherent variability and uncertainty of these energy sources, energy storage should be incorporated in buildings, in a conventional form or/and with the use of electric vehicles. This energy flow should be carefully managed, frequently with the use of a Home Energy Management System (HEMS). This system typically needs a smart infrastructure, quite often obtained by IOT techniques. HEMS and smart grid enable the use of demand side management and demand response mechanisms. To implement these techniques efficiently, one should be able to detect which appliances are working using Non-Invasive Load Monitoring (NILM), and to employ forecasts of the electricity consumed, produced, as well as its price in the energy markets. Finally, we can be interested in the energy efficiency of a single household or building, but the current trend is to address communities of buildings, with centralized or decentralized control of local and/or shared energy storages. Different energy management strategies can be used, artificial intelligence solutions being very popular nowadays. When a large community of buildings is considered, its management involves typically the fast processing of a large quantity of data, precluding this way the use of big data platforms.

These are the challenges and research trends addressed by this Special Issue.  We call for original papers, review articles, case studies, and new technology analyses that present new research results in Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Buildings.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Energy efficiency in buildings
• HVAC control
• Thermal comfort
• Near zero energy buildings
• Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS)
• Smart infrastructure for energy and buildings
• Renewable Energy in Buildings
• Energy Storage and Electrical Vehicles in buildings
• Energy communities
• Non-Invasive Load Monitoring (NILM) for Energy
• Big data and Internet of Things techniques for buildings energy management
• Forecasting techniques for energy production, energy consumption and electricity markets
• Demand side management and demand response
• Artificial intelligence/machine learning/deep learning/reinforcement learning for energy use in buildings
• Energy management strategies