The Building

Zero2020: Ireland's first zero energy retrofit

The Zero2020 project is a project involving extensive refurbishment and upgrade of 1% of an existing 1974 office and teaching space on the Bishopstown Campus of Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) as a pilot project. Its mission is to provide a live, monitored test-bed environment to explore energy and resource performance through the use of low energy solutions with emphasis on demonstrating nearly zero energy in use operation.  Following the completion of the first phase of the retrofit project in 2012, the building was used as facility and a case study for both national and international research projects. The ongoing phase of the zero2020 building project is attempting to reduce the internal electricity demand, while increasing the usage of the buildings micro-grid.

NBERT: The National Built Energy Retrofit Test-bed

The zero2020 building hosts the National Built Energy Retrofit Test-bed (NBERT). NBERT is a highly instrumented and fully occupied, low energy retrofit test-bed. The 223 square meter building has been used for national and international research projects with applications related to: ventilative cooling, overheating, ventilation and has the capacity to measure both long-term and short-term thermal comfort and indoor air quality. The building is heated using an air source heat pump (ASHP) and cooled passively using the outside air. Its electrical and thermal energy consumption is monitored on a continual basis.  

Life at NBERT looks like ...