This paper aims to investigate the potential of advanced radiator controls to reduce space heating energy demand in dwellings. The study uses Dynamic Thermal Modelling (DTM) to compare the space heating energy consumption of dwellings with programmable Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs) and dwellings with conventional TRVs. Conventional TRVs can often lead to overheating or heating rooms when not required. Programmable TRVs can overcome these limitations and this study employs DTM software package, DesignBuilder to estimate the resultant heating energy savings in a semi-detached dwelling. It is found that use of programmable TRVs can lead to space heating energy savings of up to 30%, without reducing thermal comfort of occupants.
Funding
This work has been carried out as part of the REFIT project (‘Personalised Retrofit Decision Support Tools for UK Homes using Smart Home Technology’, £1.5m, Grant Reference EP/K002457/1). REFIT is a consortium of three universities - Loughborough, Strathclyde and East Anglia - and ten industry stakeholders funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under the Transforming Energy Demand in Buildings through Digital Innovation (BuildTEDDI) funding programme. For more information see: www.epsrc.ac.uk and www.refitsmarthomes.org
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
Building Simulation and Optimization
Second IBPSA-England conference on Building Simulation and Optimization
Pages
N/A - N/A (N/A)
Citation
BADIEI, A., FIRTH, S.K. and FOUCHAL, F., 2014. The role of programmable TRVS for space heating energy demand reduction in UK homes. IN: Malki-Epsthein, L. et al. (eds) Proceedings of the 2014 Building Simulation and Optimization Conference. 23-24 June 2014, UCL, London, UK.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2014
Notes
This is a conference paper. It was presented at BSO 14, the second IBPSA-England conference on Building Simulation and Optimization.