Assessment And Energy Benchmarking For Two Archetype Sustainable Houses Through Comprehensive Long Term Monitoring

A long term monitoring system has been developed and implemented in the Sustainable Archetype House built at Kortright Conservation Centre of Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) in Vaughan, Ontario, Canada. To comprehensively monitor the energy performance and to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of the mechanical systems over 300 sensors of various types were installed. These are sufficient for energy monitoring details in the twin houses. An expandable distributed data acquisition (DAQ) system has been adopted for monitoring and control purpose. Data analysis of House-B has been performed. Results of monitoring data of energy recovery ventilator (ERV), radiant in-floor heating system, total electrical energy consumption, photovoltaic (PV) system, micro combined heat and power (CHP) unit and evacuated tube solar collector are described in Chapter 5. The sensible and latent heat recovery of the ERV increased with the increase of indoor-outdoor temperature difference and specific humidity difference, respectively. Higher radiant in-floor heating demand is observed on the 3rd floor. One year of data of the 4.08 kWp photovoltaic (PV) system has been collected and annual electricity generation is 4160 kWh. The average thermal and electrical efficiency of Whispergen micro combined heat and power (CHP) unit achieved 80% and 7% respectively. The average overall efficiency achieved 87% (based on higher heating value of natural gas). The average instantaneous efficiency of evacuated tube solar collector achieved 74%.