Applications of Active Hollow Core Slabs and Insulated Concrete Foam Walls as Thermal Storage in Cold Climate Residential Buildings

A test facility is designed and is under construction to experimentally verify the effect of thermal energy storage systems in overall performance of a coupled Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic / Thermal (BIPV/T) and Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). This study shows how the loads for the test facility were adjusted by a regular size single family residential building. Moreover, the article explains different unique options of storing thermal energy in the test facility using the thermal mass of the building itself. Numerical models of Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) wall and Ventilated Concrete Slab (VCS) were developed using SolidWorks software’ Flow Simulation module and ANSYS Fluent software.