Method to divide heating energy in energy efficient building without direct measuring

Abstract

The directive and national legislation also request owners and tenants of buildings to be encouraged to exchange information regarding actual energy consumption. The usage of individual heat allocators in old apartment buildings have shown problems because of heat flow through the walls and floors between neighbouring apartments when the room’s set point temperatures were changed, and risen the question of how fairly are the heating costs divided. In the current study, the authors propose a method for dividing the heating energy use according to specific heat loss of building envelope. We show that this method is more accurate comparing to dividing heating energy just according to the heated area. To calibrate the method, the actual data about the division of heating energy was used from apartment based metering in a new apartment building. Based on field measurements we calibrated indoor climate and energy model in IDA-ICE simulation software. Results show that if it is not possible to install individual metering of room heating, it would be possible to divide heating energy consumption according to heat loss of building envelope without degrading the indoor climate.