Abstract
Global energy efficiency can be obtained in two ordinary ways. One way is to improve the energy production and supply side, and the other way is, in general, to reduce the consumption of energy in society. This paper has focus on the latter and especially the consumption of energy for heating and cooling our houses. There is a huge energy-saving potential in this area for reducing both the global climate problems as well as economy challenges. Heating of buildings in Denmark accounts for approximately 40% of the entire national energy consumption. For this reason, a reduction of heat losses from building envelopes are of great importance in order to reach the Bologna CO2 emission reduction targets. Upgrading of the energy performance of buildings is a topic of huge global interest these years. Not only heating in the temperate and arctic regions are important, but also air conditioning and mechanical ventilation in the “warm countries” contribute to an enormous energy consumption and corresponding CO2 emission. In order to establish the best basis for upgrading the energy performance, it is important to make measurements of the heat losses at different places on a building facade, in order to optimize the energy performance. This paper presents a method for measuring the heat loss by utilizing a U-value meter. The U-value meter measures the heat transfer in the unit W/Km2 and has been used in several projects to upgrade the energy performance in temperate regions. The U-value meter was also utilized in an EUDP (Energy Technological Development and Demonstration Program) focusing on renovation of houses from the 1960s and 1970s.
Highlights
Such measurement methods are complicated and laborious because the target wall or window elements must be transported to the laboratory and mounted into the test arrangement designed for the experiment
There exist some test arrangements that can be brought to a building where the heat loss or a thermal conductivity is being researched
Solar radiation direct on a façade before a measurement will result in variations. This is due to the heating of the surface, which tells nothing about the heat loss through the façade
Summary
Around the world, building owners are able to decrease heating costs remarkably with a rational upgrading of the energy performance of their buildings This is demonstrated by measurements of different houses, built in different decades of the past century [1,2]. The U-value meter is an ideal instrument by which to establish the locations of the greatest heat loss on a facade, arming owners with the knowledge of where best to concentrate efforts to insulate and optimize savings [3] In this way, the overall costs of upgrading the energy performance can be reduced considerably, and an optimal relation between investment and savings achieved. The project aims to minimize the emission of CO2 caused by unnecessarily large energy consumption for heating [2,5]
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