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The resources are being depleted and energy costs keep climbing to new record levels. At the same time we demand more comfort. Nobody wants to be exposed to unbearable temperatures at home or at work during summer.
The energy requirement for cooling residential and office buildings is constantly increasing. One reason is the steadily rising surface of window panes on the facades. Thus, it is high time to find ways and means how buildings can guarantee sustainable summer comfort to their users and residents - even without complex and expensive air-conditioning.
Thanks to thermal measures, buildings keep emitting less valuable heat to their environment during winter time - today, only 10 % of the standard in the early 1990s. In contrast, the International Energy Agency predicts a five-fold increase of energy requirement for air-conditioning!
Since air-conditions have become a standard feature in our cars they have become more and more popular in residential buildings. If you maintain a pleasant temperature in your car, why should you have to sweat in your room at a temperature of 30 °C at night? For this reason, mobile cooling systems have been passing the cash registers of electronics stores since March. Based on 2 or 3 kW per system you can calculate the vast total energy consumption of those devices when they are all simultaneously turned on.
Our government as well as the European Union are concerned about this increase in energy consumption due to air conditioning, as it means a high dependency on the sources of supply of crude oil or gas. This dependency should be minimized. It is obvious that slowing down the use of air-conditions starts with subsidizing the so-called „passive" cooling systems, such as sun shading.
Description: Temporary sunshades lower the cooling load at the office.
The Intelligent Energy Executive Agency (IEEA) of the European Commission launched a project two years ago, called Keep Cool. The goal of this project is to achieve steady summer comfort inside buildings by means of passive measures. Keep Cool is supposed to make known those technologies that guarantee good summer comfort and consume very little or no traditional
energy.
In the course of Keep Cool completely new product data sheets were developed for all common shading systems. They show how much energy can be saved in the field of cooling, lighting and heating by means of passive technologies such as Venetian blinds, roller shutters and awnings. For the often multifunctional systems that offer sun shading, anti-glare protection, daylight illumination, sight screen, contact with the outside world and much more, product profiles have been established, to aid planners and consumers in choosing the right system.
The renowned French Institute Armines and the Austrian Energy Agency carried out simulation calculations for standard buildings (residential, office buildings) that show that sun protection technology is the most effective measure to ensure summer comfort and reduction of energy requirement for cooling systems at the same time - more than energy-efficient devices, energy-saving lighting, mechanical ventilations and other passive options. This is especially true for sun shadings mounted on the outside of the building, but also for shadings on the inside.
On the one hand motorised and automated sun protection technologies position themselves as green technologies, as they are one of the view technologies that reduce the energy requirement for cooling systems despite high demands for summer comfort. On the other hand it constitutes the third major pillar - next to photovoltaics and solar heat - in the field of solar energy use.
Entirely in the spirit of Keep Cool the sun protection technologies were considered in the framework of the stimulus package „Thermal Reconstruction" by the Austrian Government in the previous year, and were subsidized in residential buildings as well as for reducing cooling requirements in companies.
The conclusion is: The better sun protection is already integrated in the planning the lower are cooling costs on hot summer days - with even higher living comfort!
Description: The graphic shows how much sun protection technologies - depending on the type of the building - influence the cooling requirement. With a cooling load reduction of 45-75 % sun protection is the most efficient measure for residential and office buildings!
