Appropriate energy efficient building envelope technologies for social housing in the Irish climate
Extensive dynamic thermal simulation parametric analyses have been undertaken of energy efficient fabric alterations to social housing in Northern Ireland culminating in priorities for deployment. Five ȁ8basecaseȁ9 simulation models were used to represent the predominant characteristics of the existing social housing stock. The majority of technologies studied provided annual space-heating energy savings of more than 10%. The variation of energy savings and economic performance across the basecases highlights the value of a dwelling specific approach to selecting energy efficient building envelope technology solutions for energy rehabilitation programmes. The paper further outlines a framework for prioritising appropriate energy efficient building envelope technological solutions for a large regional building stock, i.e. existing social housing stock in Northern Ireland, highlighting influential parameters. An energy efficient building envelope inter-technology ranking approach provides a method of comparison across the various different dwellings in the regional housing stock. Airtightness ranked consistently highest across the dwellings studied with some solar technologies performing better than more technologically mature solutions such as insulation.
Towards exporting renewable energy from MENA region to Europe: An investigation into domestic energy use and householders’ energy behaviour in Libya
Renewable energy in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, particular solar energy, can be connected to Europe to provide the Northern neighbouring countries with electricity. To achieve this long term objective, it is necessary to understand the local domestic consumption of electricity in the MENA region as the main consumer of energy. The understanding of current and future trends could help to provide a complete picture of the energy situation in MENA region and the feasibility of exporting energy to Europe. For this reason, this paper investigates the domestic energy use and occupants’ energy behaviour in Libya. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of domestic energy consumption and householders’ awareness, attitudes and behaviour on the overall energy consumption in Libya and how this could affect the peak demand, capacity, future trends and government energy budget. The paper also investigates the sustainability aspect of consumer products and the awareness and attitude of consumers towards consumption and demand. A comprehensive survey has been conducted to evaluate several aspects of domestic energy demand and characteristics in Libya. The findings have indicated that there is a significant increase in energy demands in the household sector in Libya and it is significant to have a clear strategy to reduce carbon emission and energy use by improving occupants’ behaviour as well as utilising other sustainable measures. Minor adjustment in householders’ energy consumption behaviour and the technology used to generate energy could provide significant financial savings and contribute significantly to the reduction in carbon emission and energy consumption. This will allow significant benefit to the local economy and the energy sector in Libya but at the same time could provide sustainable energy resources for Europe on the long term.
Dynamic thermal models: Reliability for domestic building design
This paper describes a three year UK initiative—Applicability Study 1-to enhance the usability and credibility of detailed thermal simulation programs with particular reference. to the design of passive solar dwellings. Researchers at Leicester Polytechnic and the Building Research Establishment are working with ESP, HTB2 and SERIRES. The aims are to identify the problems for which these programs can be used reliably and those for which they cannot, to provide guidance on the best modelling techniques, indicate the uncertainty inherent in predictions, identify the attributes of programs which are necessary to obtain reliable results, and indicate areas in which additional theoretical or experimental research is needed. The results to date show that good agreement in some design trends can be obtained provided a high level of quality control is exercised and program users have a good understanding of the theoretical basis of the programs. There were, however, some situations in which the programs still predicted significant differences in the trends in energy consumption as the building design changed. These may be explained by the different algorithms employed by the detailed thermal simulation programs and errors in them.