study

The Advanced Building Systems Integration Consortium (ABSIC) is an industry-university partnership aimed at researching on possibilities to improve building and systems' efficiency.

This presentation goes through a specific project with a twofold objective: design a more efficient solar thermal system and improve the efficiency of existing systems, based on a given building heating and cooling demands.

Results showed that the performance of the systems can be improved up to 27% in winter (around 3MWh) and 49.2% in summer (around 7MWh).

The New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) and Building Research commissioned BRANZ to undertake an independent research study on the quality of solar water heaters in New Zealand, in terms of installation quality, energy performance and durability.

Conclusions of the study point out that in terms of quality, the systems analysed are very diverse, which denotes that there is still some issues in the application of standard practices.

In the services sector, hotels are a high energy consumer, which offers a good opportunity to promote the use of renewable energy sources, including solar thermal, in the tourism sector, especially in the Mediterranean region, as this paper emphasizes.

This paper goes through the potential of the RES' use in the total energy consumption of hotels situated in the Spanish Balearic Islands, a very famous touristic destination, with about half a million beds available.

This study was commissioned by Central Energy Fund (CEF) to Palmer Development Consulting (PDC) and Synopsis to report to the South African public and private sector of the best practices for SWH technologies, warranty periods, pricing, and standards.

The methodology of the report consisted on a questionnaire sent to worldwide manufacturers inquiring about exports of SWH systems into South Africa. Results showed a similarity in the systems and technologies, when compared to national manufacturers, but a big difference in terms of prices was registered.

This short document produced by the Institute for Energy Technology of the University of Malta, presents the results of a study undertaken to investigate the energy consumption of a duplex apartment, using, for that purpose, different energy auditing techniques.

In Malta, the domestic sector takes over 36% of the total energy consumption in the country. The highest demand rates are verified in summer due to space cooling.

The REFUND + project (2006-2009), supported by the Intelligent Energy Europe and ADEME (Agence de l'environnement et de la maîtrise de l'énergie), intends to identify, monitor and evaluate the impact of incentive schemes on the development of RES heating systems in private households in five countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Italy and Portugal. Implementation of specific financial instruments was simulated in two case studies in Lithuania and Poland.

This paper describes the special features of the Invert Simulation Tool, using the Austrian case study as an example. The objective is to analyse energy policies and related costs with a view to evaluate its application and use and its impact on GHG-emissions reductions and energy demand.