Reference Building Establishment Procedure for Residential Buildings in Turkey

The European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD Recast, Directive 2010/31/EU), introduced the “cost optimality” concept in order to take economic effects into account while analyzing the energy performances of the buildings. The cost optimal methodology framework involves several stages starting with the establishment of the reference buildings representing the building stock. This stage is important since all of the following analyzes are applied on these reference buildings with the aim of achieving generalized solutions. A research project was conducted in order to define the procedure of reference building establishment and adapting the cost optimal methodology in Turkey. This paper displays the sample reference building definition procedure followed in this project. Istanbul is selected as a pilot city for this study since this city contains various building types and user profiles. Twenty six reference buildings were defined in three categories: single family houses, apartment buildings and luxury high-rise residences. The reference buildings and their properties are also presented in this paper. The research shows that there is available data about the physical properties of the building stock in Turkey. However, there is very little information about the thermo-physical properties, user profiles and HVAC systems which are needed to calculate energy performances of the buildings. The existing building stock needs to be deeply analyzed by the authorities considering the energy performance related measures and the reference buildings are required to be defined also for other regions of Turkey by following a similar procedure.