AN initiative aimed at revolutionising the approach to retrofit and building upgrades for the UK’s non-domestic buildings has been launched this week at the Futurebuild conference in London.
Alongside two other projects funded by Innovate UK’s Net Zero Heat Programme, ALCHEMAI (Advanced Low Carbon Heat and Energy Modelling Accelerating Investment) leverages Digital Twin technology to connect sensors, Passivhaus retrofit, electricity trading, and grid flexibility to deliver clean heating solutions for a range of non-domestic buildings including leisure centres, local museums, offices, and schools.
Digital Twins, in the context of the built environment, are digital replicas of buildings created by amalgamating data from sources such as sensors, 3D models, and analytics tools.
The consortia of seven partners behind ALCHEMAI will deliver the project across 12 demonstrator sites to determine what are the best scalable and accessible building upgrades that minimise CO2 emissions and improve the comfort level and integrity of the buildings.
Matthew Paton, impact manager at BE-ST and ALCHEMAI project manager, said, “This is an exciting project that for the first time creates a coordinated study across a diverse range of building typologies. We have significant interest from both the private and public sector who are looking to implement new and more efficient approaches to decarbonise their building assets, which at the moment is done through costly, one-off energy assessments.
“The smart technology, analysis and tools created during the ALCHEMAI project will provide reliable and accurate data to enable retrofit at scale across the country and help those most in need of quality, sustainable improvements.”
