Skip to main content

Write a PREreview

From Building Services to Process Loads: Whole-Building Utility-Calibrated Simulation of Operational Decarbonisation Limits in a UK Restaurant Retrofit

Posted
Server
Preprints.org
DOI
10.20944/preprints202606.0559.v1

Restaurants combine long opening hours, catering demand, kitchen ventilation, DHW and mixed-fuel cooking loads, making their decarbonisation different from generic commercial retrofit. This single-case study develops a whole-building utility-calibrated OpenStudio/EnergyPlus model for Beit El Zaytoun, a 655.82 m² restaurant in Park Royal, London. Monthly electricity and gas data for June 2024–May 2025 were used to anchor the baseline at whole-building level. Standalone and cumulative scenarios tested insulation, low-emissivity double glazing, LED lighting and controls, ASHP service scenarios and an 11 kWp PV array. Baseline demand was 413,895 kWh/yr, equivalent to 631.1 kWh/m²·yr and 75,020 kgCO₂e/yr. The best building-focused package reduced net imported energy to 314,734 kWh/yr and operational carbon to 56,700 kgCO₂e/yr, a retained 24.0% reduction on the source reporting basis. The model-derived residual process load, kitchen and catering gas plus kitchen and back-of-house electricity, remained 233,920 kWh/yr across building-focused scenarios. The Residual-Load Index (RLI) rose from 0.57 to 0.74; with ±15% process-load allocation uncertainty, the optimised RLI range was 0.63–0.85, so the post-retrofit balance remained process-load dominated. The case demonstrates a practical decarbonisation ceiling likely to recur in similar high-process-load hospitality premises: fabric, lighting, heat electrification and PV are necessary but insufficient without catering-equipment, cooking-fuel, kitchen-ventilation, refrigeration-control, sub-metering and demand-response strategies. The paper contributes whole-building utility-calibrated quantitative evidence and a transferable RLI metric for sub-sector-specific retrofit policy.

You can write a PREreview of From Building Services to Process Loads: Whole-Building Utility-Calibrated Simulation of Operational Decarbonisation Limits in a UK Restaurant Retrofit. A PREreview is a review of a preprint and can vary from a few sentences to a lengthy report, similar to a journal-organized peer-review report.

Before you start

We will ask you to log in with your ORCID iD. If you don’t have an iD, you can create one.

What is an ORCID iD?

An ORCID iD is a unique identifier that distinguishes you from everyone with the same or similar name.

Start now