Conference article

Passive Houses have gained popularity the last ten years as a way of improving the energy efficiency in the housing stock. The challenge of avoiding external heating during the cold winter climate in Sweden has pushed the design of a Passive House in a direction where problems with excessive temperatures might occur summertime. The aim of this paper is to evaluate comfort cooling strategies for attaining good indoor climate summertime while maintaining good energy efficiency. Also; to add knowledge of comfort cooling strategies for Swedish conditions as the summer season is short and comfort cooling is normally not installed. The studied strategies include: airing; shading; increased ventilation; cooling machine and evaporative cooling. Additionally; combinations of these methods are studied. To evaluate the cooling strategies and their impact on the indoor temperature and the amount of electricity needed for their operation; computer simulations have been made using the simulation tool IDA Indoor climate and energy. The building model is based on an existing Passive House in the district Lambohov in Linköping; Sweden; where continuous logging of temperatures are available. Without comfort cooling the simulations show excessive temperatures summertime which is consistent with the field measurements from the real house. The overall judgement is that passive cooling strategies can provide sufficient cooling during the hottest part of the summer and that both shading and airing strategies should be used for a maximum cooling effect.

Building simulation; Comfort Cooling; Passive House