Energy: From ENEA a tool to calculate lighting energy consumption in buildings

LENICALC is a tool developed by ENEA to assess the energy performance of lighting in buildings, namely the Lighting Energy Numeric Indicator (LENI) index, required by the 2021 UNI EN 15193 standard on energy requirements for lighting.

Developed as part of the “Electric System Research” activities coordinated by ENEA, LENICALC was created as a tool to support professionals carry out the energy certification of a building and encounter difficulties in facing a large number of parameters. The tool is free to download at https://www.pell.enea.it/lenicalc.

LENICALC was presented at one of three days organized by ENEA, La Sapienza University of Rome and Uni, the Italian standards body, to share with designers, energy certifiers and other industry professionals advances in evaluating the energy performance of building lighting systems.

The first day was held in October 2023, the second last June in Rome, in the Engineering faculty of La Sapienza University, and the third in Bari, Italy, on Oct. 31. The three stages were designed to reach as wide an audience as possible with the aim of promoting energy-conscious consumption in academia as well.

“The UNI EN 15193 standard presents a very complex and burdensome calculation process for professionals who perform building energy assessments. For this reason it is scarcely applied, partly because there are no tools that comprehensively apply the calculation method, which instead LENICALC will be able to do by the end of 2024,” explained UNI working group coordinator Laura Blaso, head of the ENEA Smart Cities and Communities Laboratory at the Energy Technologies and Renewable Sources Department.

To develop the tool, ENEA and Sapienza conducted a detailed study on the application of the calculation method to about 2,000 numerical simulations to determine LENI reference values for various building types.

“Considering that consumption of artificial lighting systems currently accounts for at least 15-30% of a building's total consumption, it is clear that it needs to be accurately calculated. Hence the importance of continuing to follow the path taken since lighting is a strategic, highly energy-consuming asset on which there is still much to be done, adopting a sustainable energy and environmental transition approach” Blaso concluded.