The Passive House in the Electricity System of the Future

By
Hans De Keulenaer
02/06/2007
Technology: 
economic efficiency
Sector: 
dwellings, non-residential buildings
Purpose: 
economic efficiency
Channel: 
tutorial
Rating: 
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This webcast describes a number of considerations about for our energy systems when passive houses become the construction technology of choice in the future.

Reducing the energy consumption of houses fits very well with the first and most important step of the Trias Energetica strategy towards a sustainable energy system. However, this strategy will seriously influence the design of energy grids in the residential area. It will have both a technical and economical impact that can not be neglected. The energy standards for passive houses are at such a level that it is not economically viable anymore to invest in more than one energy infrastructure in a residential area. Although technically this could be a natural gas or hydrogen infrastructure, the choice for an all-electric infrastructure is more obvious. The traditional passive electricity distribution grid will gradually change into an active network with prosumers (both producers and consumers) of electricity instead of just consumers. Local balancing of electricity consumption and production, electricity storage and demand side management will become more and more important.

Comments

David Hirst's picture

Congratulations on the webcast. Very well argued, absolutely clear, and, in my view, fully valid. The main improvement I would suggest is mention of the appliance load in a passive house. But then I would, wouldn’t I! Your points about the cost of the infrastructure are very well made.

I think two comments are worthwhile:

  1. The speed with which the passive house can be rolled out. In the UK, at current rates of demolition, the expected lifetime of a house is about 1000 years. So there are very large numbers of houses (including our own) where the concept of a passive house is just unrealisable. So your arguments apply to new build. There is a dangerous zone, where houses are too efficient to justify gas delivery, but still need real space heating, so the emissions attributable to the home (from coal fired plant) go up as a result of improved insulation efficiency! Only partial improvement makes things worse. For these existing homes, the right answer seems to be to add a further infrastructure (of copper pipes?) for heat distribution. From CHP plant.
  2. Bundling of the energy purchases with infrastructure costs is not appropriate. Their cost structures are quite different, and what you are actually buying are quite different purchases. So too are their market possibilities, as there is no real chance of having a choice about who serves your house. Thus the cable (and I agree wholly with you that electricity is a far more useful energy infrastructure than any other) is unavoidably a monopoly service, very highly capital intensive and very long lasting. The decisions about it are best made with some local government involvement, so it is properly an issue for local politics. The charges are also best made based on actual costs, and a very good proxy of this is street frontage, as suggested by William Vickrey (I forget which paper). It may be useful to make some adjustment for corner properties. What you are buying for a fixed cable rent is the right to play in energy markets, whether exercised or not, but the energy markets can be quite different, competitive, with trading and real competition – possibly choice even in real time.
By David Hirst 06/06/2007
Energy Saver Dave's picture

This is an interesting topic, but I have to wonder...are passive energy houses the way of the future, like the article/webcast seem to suggest? Aside from being prohibitive by way to current costs (and let's face it, there is currently no accurate and reliable way to predict cost points in the future given the state of the economies), consumers as a whole are simply not willing to give "new" ideas a shot when it comes to something important as their home. At least that's what I have seen.

It would seem an intermediate step before passive energy houses would be energy efficient houses "to the extreme", which contains energy efficient materials, appliances, and energy saving technologies built in. Of course, the danger of this is complacency. If a normal energy consumer is put in an efficient, traditional house, they may be less likely to make the leap to the next level. I suppose we'll see how "pockets" of communities with passive houses fare. Perhaps that is the best test for global acceptance.

By Energy Saver Dave (not verified) 11/12/2008
Nuno Brandão's picture

Greetings,

My name is Nuno Brandão, I´m a Mechanical Engineer working in the
building science and energy efficiency field of study, doing
consultancy. At present, I´m finishing my Master Thesis which tests the
applicability of the Passive House standard in Portugal.

In the present work I´m testing the standard in residential houses
(using a energy simulation engine - EnergyPlus software),
which needs a very low inlet air flow and a very high heat exchange efficiency. In Portugal Passive House standard application is still in its beginning, as such is hard to find heat exchanger equipment with this requirements. I´m writing to ask for some guidance help by someone, that could point some heat exchanger equipment suppliers, which might have
these kind of equipment with very specific requirements as very high heat exchange efficiency ratio (Passive House Standard - 75% to 95%).

Thank you very much for your help and cooperation.

Kind Regards
Nuno Brandão

By Nuno Brandão (not verified) 16/04/2008
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