Effects of Climatic Conditions on Performance of Innovative Prefabricated Movable Buildings for Smart/Co-Working in Small Villages of Southern Italy

Smart/co-working spaces are growing significantly, involving 16 million workers. Many small villages, representing 11 million citizens, are facing depopulation, job opportunities scarcity and services lack. Using prefabricated movable buildings (PMBs) could represent an opportunity to create smart/co-working spaces in a regenerative contest, allowing to save energy, CO2 emissions, and costs, as well as enhance worker’s perception of surroundings, and support the rebirth of small villages with high regenerative potential. In this paper, the performance of an innovative PMB for smart/co-working have been analyzed in 5 small villages of the Campania region (southern Italy) via the software TRNSYS. The PMB accommodates up to six workers and is equipped with smart windows and roof-mounted photovoltaic panels. The produced electricity can be stored in a battery and/or used to operate an electric reversing heat pump (EHP) for heating/cooling purposes. Its dynamic performance have been compared with a conventional PMB, highlighting that the utilization of smart windows reduces the cooling demand (at least by 47.77%) and the EHP electric consumption (at least by 41.26%); the integration of both photovoltaic panels and battery allows to fully cover the energy needs (so that the PMB is totally energy independent thanks to renewable sources).