Analysis of the thermal inertia in historic buildings and related effects for retrofit strategies applied to urban energy modeling

Since the beginning of this century Italian legislation focused on historic and existing buildings’ retrofit, as they represent a large part of the national building stock. In this context the most difficult challenge is preserving heritage and obtaining energy saving at the same time. Energy Plus software is used for the detailed dynamic simulation and is compared to simplified resistance-capacitance models. A sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the input parameters and their influence on the thermal behaviour of an historic building in Padua (Italy), highlighting the effect of high thermal mass to flatten the temperature trends and optimizing systems’ operation.