In addition to the solar driven cooling systems described above, other passive cooling systems were also integrated to the building, including Outside Air Pre-cooling by means of a horizontal ground heat exchanger (e. g., earth tubes) directly connected to the Air Handling Units (AHUs).

For night cooling, natural ventilation works in combination with Radiative Cooling. It was implemented here in the form of a series of radiative panels placed on the roof and connected to radiant floors in all office zones which dissipate indoor heat gains at night.

2.2. Active Cooling Systems

Finally, the HVAC system is completed by a Conventional 100kW Air-to-water Heat pump to

ensure good thermal comfort inside the building even when unconventional systems are unavailable.

The variety of systems that has been integrated will allow researchers to study many different combinations of passive and active systems and look for the best strategies in order to achieve the targeted energy savings.

2. Control strategies

As mentioned previously, this paper will focus on the control strategies for cooling systems that has been implemented in the PSA building situated in Almeria. The difficulty lies in the optimal management of both conventional and unconventional cooling systems with the aim of minimizing the overall energy consumption while ensuring good summer thermal comfort. This is a quite difficult equation to solve and for this reason a whole research project will be dedicated to improving the control strategy initially designed for the building launch and testing phase. The control strategy explained here is therefore an initial, non-optimized one.