Verification of the energy balance of a passive house by combining measurements and dynamic simulation

Passive houses have, at design stage, to fulfill a number of performance criteria. One of them imposes the normalized theoretical heat demand to be limited to 15 kWh/m(2), year. In operation, it is very difficult to check, from simple observations or measurements, the real performance of such a house: different energy vectors may be used to meet the space heating as well as the domestic hot water demand, a storage tank may be used and fed by different energy sources (heat pump, direct electricity, solar thermal). The problem is still more complicated if the house is equipped with PV panels which naturally decrease the apparent electrical consumption. In the frame of the IEA Annex 58 project, a passive house was the object of a detailed analysis aiming at estimating the different terms of the energy balance. Some terms were results of direct in situ measurements and unmeasured terms such as solar and internal gains were estimated by dynamic simulation. The combination of measurements and simulation results allowed a reconstruction of a robust energy balance. The paper provides a detailed description of the approach and of each term of the rebuilt energy balance. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.