Deep energy renovation of the Mærsk office building in Denmark using a holistic design approach

This study targets the office buildings sector in Denmark considering a case study of the Mærsk Building, located at the University of Southern Denmark Odense campus, aiming to improve its energy performance and reduce heating and electricity consumption. The current work is carried out under the COORDICY project aiming to establish a new methodology for non-residential and public buildings deep energy renovation. The methodology is based on a holistic design approach taking into account the dynamic building energy performance to analyse and evaluate retrofit measures and packages, instead of the static approach and conventional estimations currently in use. A detailed holistic energy model for the Mærsk office building was developed using a package of Sketchup Pro, OpenStudio and EnergyPlus tools to simulate the dynamic energy performance of the building taking into account various characteristics and specifications. The model was calibrated against actual utility data and under actual weather conditions. It was shown that the building overall primary energy consumption is as high as 176.11 kWh/m ² of the indoor heated area, of which 65% is for space heating and domestic hot water. Various retrofit measures were implemented and analysed to improve the energy performance of the building. Based on the analysis, 8 deep energy renovation packages were developed and evaluated. A favourable package was highlighted comprising efficient lights, daylights sensors in open spaces and corridors, roof and exterior walls insulation and managing heating set point schedules. This deep energy retrofit package reduces the primary energy consumption to 70.44 kWh/m ², allowing the building to comply with the BR10 Danish building regulation. Additional reduction in the energy consumption was achieved through installing a 20 kWp PV system on the building roof, making the building eligible to be classified as 2015 low energy class building with 41.39 kWh/m ² energy consumption.