E4tech Software works in partnership with other organisations to develop software tools for Sustainable Buildings and energy applications.
“Interoperability platform between Building Information Modeling and Building Energy Modeling”
Client: Commission pour la technologie et l’innovation (CTI).
Partners: CNPA - EPFL.
Building Energy Modeling (BEM) is an analytical method for reducing the consumption and CO2 emissions in building design. However, it is often conducted too late in the process. At the same time, the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in project planning phases is becoming more widespread. This digitization of construction data through a digital model allows the sharing of standard data between all the actors of a project.
“Systemnachweis Minergie-ECO®”
Client: EcoBau, Swiss Federal Office of Energy
Partners: Concepto, Intep, Heig-VD
The Minergie-ECO® label has recently been established in Switzerland, as a result of co-operation between two organisations, Minergie and eco-bau. The objective of this new label is to promote buildings that not only have very low energy consumption but also guarantee a healthy and comfortable interior and a limited impact on the environment. It will be possible to use this tool either during construction or renovation. Several DLL (dynamic link library) components are currently being developed and E4tech is responsible for those components relating to energy calculations and comfort levels.
Contribution to simulationtools for architects optimisation of active and passive solar use
Client:Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
Partners: Concepto, EPFL, VelaSolaris
Challenge: Develop and market a software tool to assist in sustainable buildings design.
Approach: Solar energy, in its various forms of passive solar, active thermal and photovoltaics, is more and more needed to allow substitution of non-renewable energy in buildings and reduce the impact of the buildings to the environment. Computer tools to simulate the thermal behaviour of buildings, as SIA380/1 tools, include today passive solar gains but have crude or none implementation of active solar thermal. On the other hand solar thermal system simulation tools are very specialised and accurate, but not well linked to building models. Both tools are mostly used by engineers and thermal energy experts either to check the compliance with (SIA) Norms or to dimension the solar thermal system. Only some architects use these tools.
The goals of this project are twofold:
- combine in one tool the building energy model and all passive and active “solar” gains (windows, thermal collector, photovoltaics), allowing the user to optimise his project by testing complete solar variants at once.
- simplify the user interface, by reducing the need of data by providing “intelligent” default values for solar systems and building elements, to broaden the use of this tool to the architects community.
Lesosai – Software for thermal energy balance simulations for buildings
Client: In-house product development, with Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Partners: Concepto, EPFL, VelaSolaris, Meteotest, Heig-VD,
Challenge: Develop and market a software tool to assist in sustainable buildings design.
Approach: Design, programme and market software tool that calculates energy flows and verifies building compliance with national and EU standards.
MaterialsDB.org – tool for facilitating information exchange between building material providers and building physics software
Client: In-house product development, with and the building material providers Flumroc, Isover, Morandi, Pavatex, Swisspor, Tuileries de Fribourg et Lausanne,....
Challenge: Develop a tool for facilitating information exchange between building material providers and building physics software.
Approach: The tool want facilitate information exchange between building material providers and building physics software. At the moment, building physics software developers and building material providers all use different formats for their databases. This prevents the regular and frequent update of the list of materials available on the market.
E4tech and the building material providers Flumroc, Isover, Morandi, Pavatex, Swisspor, Tuileries de Fribourg et Lausanne, with the assistance of the Fraunhofer Institute, have developed a new open source format in XML (Extensible Markup Language). The project is funded by the providers and is open to others willing to join.
