Passive Houses in warm climates

Passive-On is a research and dissemination project funded within the Intelligent Energy for Europe SAVE programme. The project aims to promote Passive Houses in warm climates.

Background

The last ten years has seen increasing interest in North Europe in the Passive House construction standard, particularly in Germany. "Passive Houses" are buildings which assure a comfortable indoor climate in winter without the need of a conventional heating system.

To permit this, it is essential that the building's space heat load does not exceed 10 W/m² living area in order to be able to use a simple air preheater. Simulations and measurements have shown that for typical German climate such a design leads to an annual demand for space heating of 15 kWh/(m²a).

Passive Houses therefore require roughly 85% less energy for heating than a house built to existing German building regulations. The total primary energy demand, including household electricity, is limited to 120 kWh/(m²a).

Objectives of Passive-On

The Passive-On project intends to examine how to take the Passive House concept forward, especially in Southern Europe. In these regions the problem of household energy use is one not only one of providing warm houses in winter but also, and in some cases more importantly, of providing cool houses in summer. The Passive-On project has three main objectives:

• For architects and building designers (particularly small studios) the project will provide Design Guidelines and a Software Design Tool for developing cost effective all season Passive Houses in both heating load and cooling load climates.
• For Policy makers the project will provide a Scope and Strategy Report, examining barriers and solutions for EU, national and local governments which can lead to more wide scale development of Passive Houses.
• More generally, Passive-On will seek to disseminate the concept of Passive Houses in partner countries

Status

Ongoing

Leonardo ENERGY Contact

Hans De Keulenaer