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Quantifying the measurement error on England and Wales EPC ratings

Crawley, J; Biddulph, P; Northrop, PJ; Wingfield, J; Oreszczyn, T; Elwell, C; (2019) Quantifying the measurement error on England and Wales EPC ratings. Energies , 12 (18) , Article 3523. 10.3390/en12183523. Green open access

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Abstract

Domestic Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are used in the UK to provide energy efficiency ratings for use in policy and investment decisions on individual dwellings and at a stock level. There is evidence that the process of creating an EPC introduces measurement error such that repeat assessments of the same property give different ratings, compromising their reliability. This study presents a novel error analysis to estimate the size of this effect, using repeated EPC assessments of 1.6 million existing dwellings in England and Wales. A statistical model of how measurement error contributes to variation between repeated measurements is set out, and exploratory data analysis is used to decide how to apply this model to the available data. The results predict that the one standard deviation measurement error decreases with EPC rating, from around ± 8.0 EPC points on a rating of 35 to ±2.4 on a rating of 85. This predicted error is higher than the limit recommended in UK guidance except in very efficient buildings; it can also result in dwellings being rated in the wrong EPC band, for example it was estimated that 24% of band D homes are rated as band C.

Type: Article
Title: Quantifying the measurement error on England and Wales EPC ratings
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/en12183523
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/en12183523
Language: English
Additional information: © 2019 by the A`uthors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: uncertainty; energy performance certificates; domestic buildings; dataset; mathematical modelling
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Statistical Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Bartlett School Env, Energy and Resources
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10082282
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