Energy Monitoring
This research has monitored the energy performance of air conditioning and heat-pump systems 'in-use' within actual office buildings. So far the work has monitored the performance of 32 systems at sites throughout the UK since April 2000 of the following generic types:
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All-Air Systems
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Fancoil Systems
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Chilled Ceiling Systems
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Split Direct Expansion Systems
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VRF heat recovery Systems
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Unitary Heat-pump Systems
Preliminary Results
The monitored energy consumption data suggests the following in regard to UK building services industry as a whole:
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Chilled Ceiling systems consume significantly less energy than other generic types of air conditioning systems.
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All generic system types appear capable of meeting current UK good practice standards for energy use.
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All the Reverse-cycle Heat-pump systems studied met current typical practice standards and most exceeded current good practice standards for energy use.
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Oversizing of refrigeration plant is a problem since almost all the systems studied spent the majority of their time operating between 5% and 25% of their full-load capacity. Furthermore, many systems never operated above 50% of their full-load capacity implying that they had at least double the required system capacity.
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Good practice reverse-cycle heat-pumps emitted around the same amount of carbon annually as typical wet-heating systems, while also providing the additional benefits of cooling and increased control of the thermal environment.
Analysis of cooling energy demand normalised for differences in internal heat gains served suggests the following:
A paper further detailing these results can be downloaded in PDF format from the following links:
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