Assessment of the SEREINE Project: a quick and easy method to assess the energy performance of a single-family house

While research will continue until 2024, within the framework of SEREINE 2, within the PROFEEL 2 program, the project team brought together the entire construction and renovation sector, on December 16, 2021, to present its final assessment. More than 100 building professionals, design offices, project owners and operators were invited, remotely, to 2 presentations and 2 round tables on these new tools, their challenges, their contribution, their implementation and their future .

Two new solutions to assess the real energy performance of a building

One challenge, two tools and objective achieved

To objectify the quality of renovation or construction work and the gains in energy efficiency, the SEREINE project has successfully developed two new solutions for new or renovated single-family homes: a method for measuring the thermal performance of the building envelope in record time and an application to assess the energy performance of all its heating, air conditioning, domestic hot water, ventilation and lighting systems.

For Philippe Estingoy, Managing Director of the Construction Quality Agency: “Despite the health crisis which greatly slowed down experiments in the field, we achieved our objectives. Today, the envelope performance can be measured in 24 hours, which is unique in the world and the measurement tools have been optimized so that operators can use them easily. As for the interactive application which makes it possible to evaluate all the systems, it is today accessible to all, for download, and the non-qualities are listed there in order of seriousness, which makes it possible to correct them. We have thus taken up several major scientific challenges and we will be able to further develop this performance with SEREINE 2 ”.

For Pierre Oberlé, Responsible for tasks, technical contributor to SEREINE and Expert in energy performance of buildings at INES: "In view of the unprecedented climatic challenges, we are responsible for making buildings that are truly efficient: the SEREINE project has contributed to this and will continue to do so, by providing building professionals with new tools for characterizing the real performance of the building. envelope like systems ”.

It is for this reason that SEREINE was the most strategic project of the 9 projects of the PROFEEL Innovation Program. With a budget of 5 million, over 3 years (2019-2021), it has embarked on the entire energy renovation sector, that is to say those who design and do the work (companies, craftsmen, 'studies and architects) but also those who order them, namely the contracting authorities (social landlords, condominiums and individuals) and finally the measurement operators who assess them.

SEREINE envelope: a simple and reliable range to measure the thermal performance of a house in 24 or 48 hours

One measurement in 24 or 48 hours depending on the type of insulation

SEREINE is a simple set of operational methods for reliably measuring the actual thermal performance of a new or renovated home within acceptable time frames. The work carried out by the project team made it possible to reduce this time to 24 hours for houses isolated from the inside and 48 hours for those isolated from the outside. When the outside temperature is below 8 ° C. Beyond that, the durations are multiplied by two. The measurement remains of course impossible in the event of a heat wave or strong winds.

For Stéphanie Derouineau, scientific and technical coordinator of SEREINE, Deputy Director of the Energy Environment department at CSTB: “SEREINE now offers a complete range of protocols for measuring the level of thermal insulation in single-family homes. A range that is available according to the type of insulation and the season. The measure is thus accessible to a very large part of the individual housing markets, whether new or renovated. "

Quick and easy implementation thanks to optimized hardware

The process of a SEREINE measurement is simple. The operator, previously trained, must first prepare his online campaign. It does this by documenting the characteristics of the housing and defining the location of the sensors. Once there, in the house emptied of its occupants, he obstructs all openings, turns off the energy systems permanently, installs the equipment, then starts heating and measuring. A very elaborate algorithm then generates digital models adapted to each type of building, and calculates the energy loss coefficient from the measurements taken.

So that all operators can quickly adopt this protocol, the measurement kit has been optimized and its volume reduced. Now all you need is a smartphone to prepare, launch and monitor the measurement remotely.

Outside, the number of sensors has been reduced from 10 to 3 and the irradiation probe has been removed in favor of meteorological data, which is automatically collected. Inside, for each room in the house, the operator now has a 13 x 20 x 30 cm module containing a heater with integrated fan and a temperature probe on a telescopic pole. The number of these modules has been increased from 7 to 10 in order to be able to equip all the rooms of certain large houses.

For Rémi BOUCHIE, Technical Contributor of SEREINE, Head of Division at CSTB: “Our priority was to facilitate the use of the kit and to make it as fluid as possible, so that the operators appropriated it intuitively. Thanks to their feedback, we were able to both reduce its size and simplify its installation, while preserving the reliability of the measurement. It is now installed much more quickly, which reduces the human cost of intervention on site. "

Visual indicators accessible to all

Whether it is a new or renovated house, the measurement result is expressed in Watt / Kelvin, accompanied by a confidence interval. But to be more concrete and accessible to all, it is interpreted graphically. In the event of renovation, SEREINE positions the house in relation to the insulation scale of the new DPE with the same color code. For new vehicles, SEREINE displays a traffic light which materializes the difference between the measured performance and the performance calculated during design. When the light is green, the expected performance has been achieved. If it is red, it means that she is not there.

SEREINE systems: an interactive application to assess the energy performance of all systems in the house

A mobile application to assess all systems

Unlike the envelope, whose performance can be measured, the systems are subject to a qualitative evaluation which consists in verifying that the good practices of design, implementation and adjustment have been respected, through almost 200 checks on 60 different systems. To do this, the SEREINE team has designed a mobile application covering the main heating, domestic hot water, ventilation, cooling and lighting equipment. This solution is today the only one which covers all the energy systems of a building in an exhaustive way.

A two-step assessment

Spread over two half-days, this assessment takes place in 2 stages. A documentary audit during which the operator collects the documents, specifies the configuration and checks design elements, based on the information available. And an on-site audit, with or without occupants, during which he updates the configuration based on what he sees on site, then checks the correct installation and adjustment of the equipment. This step involves visual findings and measurements.

Downloadable since December 16, the SEREINE Systems application has been designed to be as intuitive as possible and to make life easier for operators. To do this, the project team has planned for as many uses as possible, in order to design a flexible tool that adapts to the different operating modes of the auditors. They can perform the audit at their own pace and in the order they want, on a tablet, smartphone or computer, even without being connected to a network.

Action-oriented indicators

Once the audit is complete, the application generates an automatic report with a summary and detailed results. Because some information may be missing or because some verifications may have been impossible to perform, the summary first of all presents a completeness rate, expressed in%. This rate indicates the level of representativeness of the evaluation.

Focused on action, the following indicators are presented in the form of a list of faults, classified in order of seriousness, as in a motor vehicle inspection. With so-called critical faults, major faults and minor faults. This makes it possible to visualize the problems at a glance.

The detailed results retrace all the checks made, whether there is a defect or not. With, each time, what was observed, the reference response as well as any deviations, their cause and their incidence.

SERENE 2

Given these promising results and the many avenues that are emerging, SEREINE will be renewed for 3 years (2022-2024). With a new budget of € 5 million, SEREINE 2 will still be deployed within the PROFEEL program which will also be extended.

For Aurélien LOPES, SEREINE project leader at AQC: “The objective is to massify the experiments on the envelope as well as on the systems and, for SEREINE Envelope, to further reduce the measurement time, to identify the non-qualities and to finalize the method for the collective. For SEREINE Systèmes, it will be a question of finalizing and feeding the open data platform ”.