На английском языке. Магистерская диссертация. Работа выполнена в University of Strathclyde, 2011, 128 pages.
Abstract. In 2010, within the EU‟s new strategy for sustainable growth and jobs named „Europe 2020‟, the European Commission defined the necessity of mitigate the climate change and make a sustainable use of the energy as one of the main headline targets. Objectives of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, to obtain 20% of EU‟s energy requirements from renewable sources and to obtain another 20% of increase in energy efficiency were set. European Union countries use an average of about 40% of their total energy needs in residential and commercial buildings. The expansion of Passive Houses could be a perfect way to meet these objectives since the PassivHaus criteria establishes a maximum space heating use of 15 kWh/(m²a), which may lead to a saving up to 90% compared with standard houses. This huge decrease could even open the possibility of achieving Zero Carbon Energy buildings if appropriate renewable energy schemes are integrated in these dwellings.
The PassivHaus concept is seeking for a high thermal comfort and indoor air quality with a minimal energy use. It was developed about 20 years ago mainly in Germany and Austria and more recently in the UK, although nowadays new projects are appearing in other EU countries and in the USA with the aim to adapt these highly efficient energy buildings to another different climates.
Within this background context, this thesis carries out an exploration of Passive House performance in two completely different climates using high resolution dynamic simulation. In order to do that, a highly detailed model of a Scottish certified Passive House was designed in ESP-r using all the accurate construction details from the available PHPP spreadsheet. Then, performance of this dwelling was evaluated for a Scottish climate and results were compared with the PHPP spreadsheet, identifying the differences between both approaches. Results showed that ESP-r space heating prediction was about 300 kWh larger than PHPP prediction. Different reasons were founded as origin of this difference being the more precise climate database used in ESP-r the main cause.
This research also explores the performance of this dwelling when the model is transferred to a warmer location such as Madrid. It studies the great importance that the implementation of a mechanically controlled night ventilation system could have in the reduction of the high cooling demand obtained as a consequence of the high ambient temperatures. As the main aim of this section is to evaluate the power of the aforementioned system and the length of this project was highly time constrained, Scottish vernacular architecture was not modified when the model was transferred to the new location. Therefore, this study could also be considered as a method to mitigate the coming global warming in cold climates. Results showed the great advantages obtained from the installation of this type of night ventilation system since a saving of more than 50% in cooling demand was achieved and PassivHaus criteria in terms of energy demand was met just by implementing this scheme. Further work will be suggested regarding the application of this type of systems in Passive Houses totally adapted to these climates (shading devices, building techniques, etc.).The last part of this thesis elaborates a brief preliminary study of the possibility of achieving a Net Zero Energy building. It explores to what extent the installation of a PV array covering the entire roof in a Passive House could contribute in obtaining this type of buildings. MERIT software was used for this purpose and results showed that it was possible to achieve it in a warm climate such as Madrid but not in a cold climate such as Dunoon, Scotland.
