Energy Systems Integration: from building scale to urban scale

The research activity presented in this thesis focuses on the heating energy demand assessment of a small urban district with buildings connected to the local District Heating Network (DHN). The main goal of the work consisted in determining effective actions that could be applied on both the heating system and on the envelope of five case study buildings in order to reduce the morning peak of the heating system and reduce also the overall energy demand for space heating. The outcomes of this research may be useful to assess the impact of the proposed improvements on the operation of a urban district heating network. A further goal of the work carried out was to develop an Artificial Neural Network useful to forecast, at short term, the indoor temperature of rooms once the weather conditions and the thermal energy supplied by the District Heating Network are known.