Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/4329
Title: Household energy demand management using retrofitting and passive energy saving methods
Authors: Liang, Xinxin
Issue Date: 2018
Publisher: Newcastle University
Abstract: Currently, building energy conservation has turned into one of the most attractive topic worldwide as buildings contribute the most energy consumption than any other consumers and they also produce a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In the United Kingdom, the residential building becomes the biggest energy consumer, with nearly 30% of the total energy consumption. Among them, existing traditional old style households consume much more energy compared to those new build domestic properties that adopted various energy saving methods. Therefore, it indicates a great opportunity to cut down the energy usage and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from buildings by retrofitting conventional houses. A detailed background study and literature review were reported involving current building energy challenges, domestic energy demand features, conventional and low energy domestic properties and the retrofitting of buildings. Two case studies were conducted to investigate the performance of a Conventional House and a Passive House, respectively. A set of data sensoring and recording instrument was installed in each house to record the properties’ electricity and gas consumption, indoor temperature, relative humidity and CO2 concerntration for more than one year. Compuational models for both dwellings to simulate their energy consumption and indoor environmental condition were developed by DesignBuilder software. A simulation study by applying Passive House standard to retrofit the Conventional House was conducted after the model validation, which included adding insulation, utilising triple glazing and improving gas boiler’s efficiency. An investigation to minimise the risk of summer overheating in the Passive House was carried out to further enhance its performance. The main findings of this research are: for the Passive House, the building performance was remarkable; for the Conventional House, retrofitting by using passive energy saving methods is essential to improve its building performance for reducing the energy demand and increasing the indoor temperature. Through the building fabrics improvement in the model simulation, the primary energy demand of the Conventional House was reduced significantly by 78% compared to its original status, and the indoor temperature was increased to comfortable level to satisfy the residents’ requirement. Overall, the results from this research indicates the advantage of house retrofitting by using passive energy saving methods in achieving lower energy consumption and good thermal comfort. The fingdings of this study can be used as a reference for the future UK conventional household retrofitting.
Description: PhD Thesis
URI: http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/4329
Appears in Collections:School of Engineering

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