4 research outputs found
A socio-technical evaluation of the impact of energy demand reduction measures in family homes
Energy consumption in the home depends on appliance ownership and use, space heating systems,
control set-points and hot water use. It represents a significant proportion of national
demand in the UK. The factors that drive the level of consumption are a complex and interrelated
mix of the numbers of people in the home, the building and system characteristics as well
as the preferences for the internal environment and service choices of occupants. Reducing the
energy demand in the domestic sector is critical to achieving the national 2050 carbon targets,
as upward of 60% reduction in demand is assumed by many energy system scenarios and technology
pathways. The uptake of reduction measures has been demonstrated to be quite ad hoc
and intervention studies have demonstrated considerable variation in the results. Additionally,
a limitation of many studies is that they only consider one intervention, whereas a more holistic
approach to the assessment of the potential of reduction measures in specific homes may yield
a better understanding of the likely impact of measures on the whole house consumption and
indeed would shed light on the appropriateness of the assumptions that underpin the decisions
that need to be made regarding the future energy supply system and demand strategies.
This work presents a systematic approach to modelling potential reductions for a set of seven
family homes, feeding back this information to householders and then evaluating the likely reduction
potential based on their responses. Carried out through a combination of monitoring
and semi-structured interviews, the approach develops a methodology to model energy reduction
in specific homes using monitoring data and steady-state heat balance principles to determine
ventilation heat loss, improving the assumptions within the energy model regarding those variables
affected by human behaviour. The findings suggest that the anticipated reductions in end
use energy demand in the domestic sector are possible, but that there is no `one size fits all'
solution. A combination of retrofitting and lifestyle change is needed in most homes and smart
home technology may potentially be useful in assisting the home owner to achieve reductions
where they are attempting to strike a balance between energy efficiency, service and comfort
Determining of the role of ventilation in residential energy demand reduction using a heat-balance approach
Ventilation in domestic buildings can have a significant impact on energy consumption but it is notoriously difficult to quantify, requiring physical test methods that are cumbersome and costly to apply. Energy demand reduction analyses routinely neglect the impact of ventilation and so offering well balanced advice for specific households is not possible. This paper describes a simple steady-state, heat-balance calculation method that is supplemented with monitoring data to model the effectiveness of reducing ventilation rates to minimum standards for individual homes. A key step is to determine the daily mean air change rate and the method is shown to yield plausible estimates that can then be used to establish the impact on energy demand. The benefits of the approach include improved energy demand disaggregation, customised energy demand reduction assessment and offers a means to underpin the development of better models of ventilation for building performance analysis
Quantifying energy demand reduction considering householder willingness to apply measures
Reducing energy demand in the domestic sector will be an important feature of
future energy systems but is challenging to achieve in practice. Solutions lie in a
range of building fabric and system improvements as well as adopting more
sustainable routines and conceptions of normality in the home. The impact of
such measures has so far been quantified without considering the willingness of
the householder to adopt them. This paper uses a modelling approach to evaluate
the effectiveness of technical and lifestyle measures to reduce energy demand in
six households based on monitoring data and insights from interviews. The
results are benchmarked against estimated tailored 2050 reduction targets and
demonstrate that although these targets are achievable in the studied homes,
householders might not always be willing to apply them. The resultant reduction
pathways are shown to vary significantly between households, suggesting that
bespoke strategies are needed to allow households to identify and select the most
appropriate methods that allow them to maximise demand reduction
LEEDR: what are the results? Participant feedback for H99
The LEEDR project was a four-year study that explored energy consumption in family homes. 20 households took part, being involved for about three years. Insights were fed back to the participants at the end of the project in the form of a unique, tailored book for each family. This book represents the style, formatting and information content of those books. This version has been called ‘H99’ and it is an amalgam of chapters from multiple homes, and therefore should not be used as a source of data or analysis: please refer to publications. The information contained here has been released generally in the hope that it might inspire and inform the development of feedback from other similar projects