As part of the EU project Energy Efficient Demo Multiresidential highrise Building (EE-highrise), this thesis work evaluates and changes the Slovenian Eco Silver House (ESH) high rise building model in order to see if it can be classifiable as a passive house in different European regions.
The purpose of this thesis work was to evaluate if the ESH could meet the European and Swedish passive house classification in Sibernik, Ljubljana, Lund, Östersund, Sundsvall and Kiruna. The purpose was also to make a sensitivity analysis of different energy efficiency measures in the energy performance of the building. This analysis was conducted to understand which of the selected energy efficiency measures made the most significant improvements in the results.
The measures included in the sensitivity analysis were the building envelopes wall insulation thickness, changing the window frames, altering the ventilation air duct length and width as well as increasing the air duct insulation thickness. Finally, simulations with solar panels on the roof of the ESH were carried out.
For the European passive house classification, the study involved constructing the model in the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) and simulating each region and energy efficiency measures separately. PHPP is however made specifically for verifying buildings according to the European passive house standard. So the demands for the Swedish passive house classification cannot be calculated in the PHPP simulations. Because of this, the data available through PHPP was used to manually calculate the Swedish passive house requirements.
The results showed that the original ESH model, was only passive house certifiable according to the European classification in Sibernik. When including the additional energy efficiency measures it was possible for the ESH to become passive house certifiable in Lund, Ljubljana and Sibernik.
The Swedish passive house classification results suggests that the ESH may be passive house certifiable in Lund. Also, with additional energy efficiency measures the ESH may meet the passive house requirements in Sundsvall and Kiruna. However, all the passive house classification parameters could not be considered in this study. Accordingly, additional analysis are required to draw final conclusions on whether the ESH building could meet the Swedish passive house certification in the different Swedish climate zones.
The conclusions drawn were that all the energy efficiency measures contribute to reducing the primary energy demand, heating demand and the heating load. However, these same energy efficiency measures would at the same time increase the cooling demand. Because of this, it was discussed that specific regional models should be made. Because some regional models might benefit from not including the energy efficiency measures used in this thesis at all. They might instead benefit from finding and implementing energy efficiency measures that reduce the cooling demand.
Source: Umeå University
Author: Lundmark, Martin