Theoretical Analysis And Experimental Validation About The Energy Consumption Of Small Houses

Nowadays produce and supply of energy is greatly influenced by the internationalpolitical and social factors. Energy conservation and emission reduction is set as a longterm policy by Chinese government to ensure scientific development and environmentprotection. Compared with other countries, energy consumption per person in China ismuch lower. As the development of economic and urbanization, people’s living standardsimproves continually and energy consumption of civil residential buildings grows quickly,the contradiction between rapid growth of energy consumption of civil residentialbuildings and energy demand of other economic fields have become increasinglyprominent. It’s necessary to build energy saving houses and promote energy savingtechnologies.A series of theoretic and experimental researches were done to analysis the energyconsumption features and energy saving methods of houses in hot summer and cold winterzone, As the research object, the smart apartment was located on the third floor of greenenergy laboratory (GEL), with high insulation external building envelope including EIFScurtain wall and double-layer Low-E glasses; with heating, ventilation and air conditioning(HVAC) system including variable refrigerant flow (VRF) air conditioning system and heatrecovery ventilation (HRV); with home energy management system to monitor andmanage the facilities. The main research and results includes:(1) The model of smart apartment was built with EnergyPlus so as to simulate theenergy consumption of HVAC system and experiment was done for validation. Resultsshowed that the simulation data was close to the experimental data, which indicated thesimulation model was effective. The error between simulation and experiment results wascaused by simplification of building structure and estimate of its properties, test and metererrors, simplification of VRF model, VRF performance curve errors and EnergyPluscomputing engine error, etc..(2)The simulation model was built with EnergyPlus to analysis the air conditioning load and the annual power consumption of traditional residence and smart apartment.Results showed that in climate condition of Shanghai (hot summer and cold winterzone), the air conditioning load of smart apartment was much lower than that oftraditional residence. Compared with traditional residence, the annual powerconsumption of smart apartment was reduced by16.3%, while power consumed forcooling was reduced by15%and power consumed for heating was reduced by17.6%,and more energy was saved during winter than summer.(3) With EnergyPlus, the simulation model of heat recovery ventilation (HRV) wasbuilt to analyse the influence of HRV on energy savings in residential buildings.Simulation results showed that with heat recovery of HRV, more energy wasconsumed in transitional season May and October, while less energy was consumed inthe other months. As the difference of indoor and outdoor temperatures was greater inwinter, the energy saved by HRV during winter was greater, which was6.4times ofthat in summer. Hence, in line with certain ventilation rate and indoor temperature, theoptimum operation schedule for HRV was normal ventilation mode for all May andOctober; heat recovery mode for all the other months; and the annual energyconsumption was reduced by10.4%.(4) The simulation model was built with EnergyPlus to analysis the energyconsumption structure and distribution of smart apartment. Results showed that the energyconsumed by HVAC system reached50.7%of the whole energy consumption, which wasthe biggest of all aspects; The energy consumed for cooking reached17.6%; and9.2%forhot water,6.4%for lighting,16.1%for other household appliances including TV, fridgeand so on. The energy consumed for HVAC system and hot water was less than usual,which indicated that it was efficient to use high insulation building envelope, VRF andHRV and air source heat pump water heater in hot summer and cold winter zone.