Measured energy consumption of educational buildings in a Finnish city

Abstract

This study measures energy consumption in existing educational buildings. The study provides an overall picture of energy consumption and assesses the factors that are used in evaluating measured energy. The studied buildings are day care centres, schools and university buildings located in southern Finland.The energy efficiency requirements in Finnish building regulations have become significantly stricter in recent years. This study shows that in different educational building type, the newer buildings consume less heating. However, such a clear correlation not found for electricity consumption. In the day care centres and school buildings studied, the primary heating consumption as a function of the age of the buildings has a decreasing trend. In turn, the primary electricity consumption has a slightly rising trend. However, in different building types, the primary heating and electricity consumption varied significantly between the buildings e.g. in day care centres variation was 83%, in schools 84% and in university buildings 76%. This study shows that even though Finnish climate is cold the primary electricity consumption is higher than primary heating in educational buildings constructed in the 2000s. This means that in the design phase, there is a need to find ways to influence the electricity consumption in particular.