The Energy Savings Potential of a Heat Recovery Unit and Demand Controlled Ventilation in an Office Building

Abstract: The building sector is responsible for approximately 40 % of the total energy usage in Sweden. In office buildings the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system can account for up to 55 % of the energy usage. In order to reduce the energy usage of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system different control methods are often used. One of these control methods is demand controlled ventilation, where the ventilation system is controlled with regard to occupancy with the help of motion and/or CO2 sensors. The aim of this thesis was to determine the energy savings potential of a heat recovery unit as well as demand controlled ventilation in an office building. The effect of longer intervals between sensor control signals to the ventilation system was also investigated. This is done by creating schedules, gathered from actual building occupancy, that are being used to control the occupancy and ventilation in a building model in the building performance simulation software IDA ICE. As a reference building, the fifth floor of the LU1 section of the natural science building at Umeå University is used. The reference building consists of 40 offices for which the occupancies are known. The average occupancy for all the offices combined throughout the investigated time period is determined to be 34.8 %. The results from the simulations indicate that an energy savings potential of 52.98 % can be achieved by a heat recovery unit with an efficiency of 80 % or 95 %, when compared to not having a heat recovery unit. When implementing demand controlled ventilation an energy savings potential of 2.8-11.0 % can be achieved, with the energy savings potential decreasing when the efficiency of the heat recovery unit increases. Finally, it is shown that longer intervals between sensor control signals to the ventilation system leads to a small increase in energy usage and poorer indoor air quality.