University of Helsinki is represented on the advisory committee of the Norwegian Zero Energy Neighbourhoods Centre. Based on ENERGISE research results, Eva Heiskanen gave a presentation on May 6th, 2019 to the staff of the centre, which highlighted the potential for a more flexible and adaptive concept of thermal comfort. This is an important debate in the building physics and engineering community, where zero-energy requirements usually have fixed setpoints for indoor temperature, or narrow ranges. This constrains the design options for creating zero-energy buildings. There are also adaptive thermal comfort standards developed, which accept that people can adapt to different kinds of temperatures. Several engineers are getting interested in this concept, which could reverse the long-standing trend toward uniform narrow ranges for thermal comfort in building design and energy efficiency standards.
Since the role of domestic hot water in building energy use is growing as buildings become more efficient in terms of space heating, ENERGISE-type challenges could be used to test the scope for reducing the consumption of hot water through practice change, as was done in the CONSENSUS project. This would be an important next step toward achieving zero-energy buildings and neighbourhoods.
Eva Heiskanen, Consumer Society Research Centre at the University of Helsinki
Source of the photo: https://www.zeb.no/index.php/en/living-lab-trondheim