Heating Energy and Peak-Power Demand in a Standard and Low Energy Building

Miimu Airaksinen,Mika Vuolle

doi:10.3390/en6010235

Abstract

Building energy efficiency legislation has traditionally focused on space heating energy consumption. This has led to a decrease in energy consumption, especially in space heating. However, in the future when more renewable energy is used both on site and in energy systems, the peak energy demand becomes more important with respect to CO2 emissions and energy security. In this study it was found out the difference between space heating energy consumption was 55%–62% when a low energy and standard building were compared. However, the difference in peak energy demands was only 28%–34%, showing the importance of paying attention to the peak demands as well.

Highlights

While there is a general consensus that buildings’ energy use and environmental impact must be reduced, there have been many discussions in the recent years as to the proper means and ways of achieving this
In very low energy buildings the difference between massive and light weight structure was smaller compared to building code level differences, but the lower window g-value increased the space heating consumption clearly more
This study has compared a building built according to Finnish building code level and a very low energy building

Summary

Introduction

While there is a general consensus that buildings’ energy use and environmental impact must be reduced, there have been many discussions in the recent years as to the proper means and ways of achieving this. Buildings in Nature are consuming energy and it is obvious that the main target for buildings is to reduce the energy consumption and reduce their environmental impact by way of reduced fossil fuel consumption. In Western countries buildings consume typically 40% of the energy [3,4,5]. The residential sector alone currently accounts for 30% of all electricity consumed in developed countries, corresponding to 21% of energy-related CO2 emissions. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development energy use in buildings could be cut by

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