Rehva guidebook

Doreen E. Kalz

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE

Heidenhofstrasse 2

79100 Freiburg

Germany
Jens Pafferott

Hochschule Offenburg

Badstraße 24

76652 Offenburg

Germany

The RHEVA Guidebook on Low-Energy Cooling and Thermal Comfort supports HVAC planners in reducing the cooling energy demand, improving the indoor environment and designing more cost-effective building concepts.

The aim of the ThermCo project was to evaluate low-energy cooling concepts all-over Europe using a standardized method based on existing monitoring data from best practice examples, to provide design guidelines for typical building concepts in the European climate zones for architects and HVAC-engineers and to collect the knowledge available. The proposed approach was applied to eight demonstration projects in different climatic zones of Europe.

High performance buildings have shown that it is possible to go clearly beyond the energy requirements of existing legislation and obtaining good thermal comfort. However, there is still a strong uncertainty in day-to-day practice due to the lack of legislative regulations for mixed-mode buildings which are neither only naturally ventilated nor fully air-conditioned, but use a mix of different low-energy cooling techniques.

Based on the findings from monitoring campaigns (long-term measurements in combination with field studies on thermal comfort), simulation studies, and a comprehensive review on existing standards and guidelines, the main outcome of the ThermCo project is this REHVA Guidebook which acts as a commonly accessible knowledge pool for passive and low-energy cooling techniques.

Many project results have been published. The website www.thermco.org acts as a commonly accessible documentation database.

The participating partners in ThermCo and the workpackages are:

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE

PSE GmbH
Emmy-Noether Str. 2 79100 Freiburg, Germany

rehva Federation of European heating and air-conditioning associations

University of Karlsruhe (TH)

Politecnico di Milano

Technical University of Denmark

University of La Rochelle

Helsinki University of Technology

Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Czech Technical University

The material presented in this publication has been collected and developed within the Project THERMCO - Thermal comfort in buildings with low-energy cooling; Establishing an annex for EPBD-related CEN-standards for buildings with high energy efficiency and good indoor environment EIE/07/026/SI2.466692. The Guidebook is the result of a joint effort of 9 European countries. The participating countries have all contributed to the Guidebook by collecting information and carrying out a long-term monitoring campaign in non-residential buildings in their own countries. Some of the participants have taken the responsibility for the leadership of the work packages, for the collection of information or for writing Chapters in the Guidebook.

All those who have contributed to the project by taking part in the numerous discussions, are gratefully acknowledged: Andreas Wagner (KIT), Bjarne Olesen and Peter Strøm-Tejsen (DTU), Jarek Kurnitski (HUT), Mat Santamouris and Theoni Karlessi (NKUA), Francis Allard and Christian Inard (ULR), Karel Kabele and Michal Kabrhel (CTU), Lorenzo Pagliano and Paolo Zangheri (PdM), Adrian-Gabriel Ghiaus (TUB), Olli Seppanen (rehva), Werner Warmuth and Johannes Farian (PSE), Gisela Vogt, Fabian Hoelzenbein and Martin Fischer (ISE). Some international experts provided input and commented on the underlying methods on monitoring, questionnaires, and data evaluation. Their comments and suggestions were of great value: Fergus Nicol, Richard de Dear, and Sebastian Herkel.

Further, the meta-analysis of the European building is extended by monitoring results from German non-residential buildings. Monitoring and evaluation was funded by the German Ministry of Economics and Labour BMWi under the program “Energy Optimized Building” (BMWi 0335007C), Energy-optimized construction in refurbishment (BMWi 0335007C), LowEx:Monitor (BMWi 0327466B), and ModQS (BMWi 0327893A) and is gratefully acknowledged. Monitoring, data acquisition and commissioning is a challenging task. The authors would sincerely like to thank the various evaluation teams for excellent support, discussion and cooperation.