For a few years a team of academics in the US has been on a quest to revolutionise the way buildings are cooled. Now, ongoing research by one of them could be about to deliver one of the biggest gamechangers to building management, as Andrew Tunnicliffe finds out.
The EU-funded Sinfonia smart cities project aims to retrofit more than 100,000m2 of living space in two pioneer districts, optimising technologies for electricity grids and district heating and cooling. At the project's heart is collaboration - the sharing of processes to increase energy savings and develop a coherent framework to expand the use of renewables.