18 May 2017

P.1.3.6 ZEB ready for children care center in cold region in Japan; – GSHP floor heating combined with exhaust air heat recovery

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Amount of energy consumption for heating in cold regions could be significantly reduced by the utilizing Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP), which is one of the promising system for achieving a net-zero energy building (ZEB) in cold regions. Our team had related to planning, designing and construction of Rusutsu children care centre which has opened from May, 2015 in cold and snowy region in Japan. This building oriented to “ZEB ready” which is similar to “near ZEB” and is defined as a building which can reduce the amount of primary energy consumption by half compared to conventional buildings. Typical passive design techniques and installations which use renewable thermal energy resources including GSHP have been adopted. Here, Rusutsu village is well known as a sky resort area and one of the coldest villages with heavy snowfall in Japan. The minimum air temperature often reaching below -25 oC. In this research, the analysis of the actual annual energy balance and measuring results of the indoor thermal environment and the air quality are shown. Then the optimization control methodology of GSHP for the floor heating was examined by using our own developed “ZEB simulator “, which could reproduce the actual annual electric power consumptions of GSHP and the room temperatures. Annual energy balance was evaluated and the effectiveness of GSHP for low temperature floor heating was clarified.