Spear­head­ing re­search and prac­tice

The RENplusHOMES pro­ject, which star­ted in June 2023, aims to de­vel­op a uni­ver­sal meth­od­o­logy for plus-en­ergy houses and dis­tricts, which should con­tain widely rep­lic­able tech­no­lo­gies and in­teg­rated soft­ware solu­tions. In this con­text, two new build­ings and two ret­ro­fits of old build­ings are be­ing real­ized in four EU coun­tries un­der dif­fer­ent cli­mat­ic con­di­tions. The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te con­trib­utes its many years of pos­it­ive ex­per­i­en­ce with Pass­ive Houses to the pro­ject. Dur­ing this peri­od, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te will be ded­ic­ated to shower wa­ter heat re­cov­ery and primary en­ergy re­new­able (PER).

Un­der the um­brella of the on-go­ing in­itia­ti­ve "JET­ZT" ("NOW"), the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te cre­ated a seminar series for tradespeople which is avail­able for free (Ger­man only). Fur­ther­more, with fin­an­cial sup­port from the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics of the Ger­man State of Hesse, the In­sti­tu­te pub­lished a large num­ber of DIY in­struc­tions for homeown­ers who strive to re­duce their en­ergy bills while mak­ing their homes health­i­er and more com­fort­able. In ad­di­tion to the PDF instructions (Ger­man only), this also in­cludes a free DIY webinar series (Ger­man only).

On the oc­ca­sion of the 25th "birth­day" of the world's first Pass­ive House in Darm­stadt-Kranich­stein, a group of ex­perts ex­amined the pi­onieer­ing pro­ject in de­tail. In the course of a mon­it­or­ing pro­ject fun­ded by the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics of the Ger­man State of Hesse, ex­perts ana­lysed all as­pects of the build­ing ran­ging from the con­di­tion of the con­struc­tion ma­ter­i­als to the ef­fi­ciency of the heat sup­ply and the vent­il­a­tion sys­tem to the hy­giene of the vent­il­a­tion ducts and the over­all air qual­ity. The res­ult: After 25 years, the first Pass­ive House still "works" as planned and re­li­ably en­sures high liv­ing com­fort, good air qual­ity and low en­ergy bills.

Video documentation of the results (German) | Research paper (German) | Peer-re­viewed art­icle: Durability of building fabric components and ventilation systems in passive houses

The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te has par­ti­cip­ated in sev­er­al pro­jects of the In­ter­na­tion­al En­ergy Agency. One of them was the pro­ject IEA TAsk 28 "Sus­tain­able sol­ar hous­ing" in which the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te de­ve­loped and val­id­ated its meas­ure­ment for the heat­ing load (research report Task 28 - German only). An­oth­er pro­ject was the „In­Situ veri­fic­a­tion pro­ced­ure“ IEA EBC Annex 71 „Build­ing En­ergy Per­form­ance As­sess­ment Based on In-situ Meas­ure­ments“ which re­ceived fund­ing from the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Eco­nomy. This was a fol­low-up to the pro­ject „In­Situ test­ing pro­ced­ure“ which was in­teg­rated in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al An­nex 58. In con­junc­tion with the pro­ject part­ners Fraunhofer In­sti­tu­te for Build­ing Phys­ics, Uni­versity of Rosen­heim, Ther­mokon Sensor­tech­nik GmbH und EnOcean GmbH, a meth­od for de­term­in­ing the en­ergy ef­fi­ciency of a build­ing was de­ve­loped. Draw­ing on col­lec­ted meas­ure­ment data, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te in­vest­ig­ated the sep­ar­ab­il­ity of the main in­flu­en­cing factors (build­ing en­vel­ope, build­ing ser­vices and users) on the en­ergy con­sump­tion of build­ings. The aim was to be able to ana­lyse the causes of pos­sible dif­fer­en­ces between the de­mand cal­cu­la­tion and the con­sump­tion and to al­loc­ate them ac­cord­ingly. For this pur­pose, de­tailed mon­it­or­ing in­vest­ig­a­tions were car­ried out on real build­ings. Pro­ject re­port (in Ger­man): Part 1 (Measurement and simulation in Darmstadt-Kranichstein) | Part 2 (Multi-family housing in Gießen)

The Train-to-NZEB pro­ject aimed to provide world-class train­ing on en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and re­new­able en­ergy in build­ings. Newly com­piled cur­ricula were im­ple­men­ted in newly cre­ated edu­ca­tion and ad­vis­ory centres (Build­ing Know­ledge Hubs) in vari­ous European coun­tries. Busi­ness plans for each train­ing centre and up-to-date train­ing mod­els form the basis for sus­tain­able suc­cess. The pro­ject im­proved know­ledge and skills in the con­struc­tion sec­tor through prac­tic­al train­ing, de­mon­stra­tions and com­pre­hens­ive con­sult­ing ser­vices on the plan­ning and con­struc­tion of nearly zero-en­ergy build­ings (NZEB) us­ing re­new­able en­er­gies, based on the Pass­ive House concept.

"Smart City": In the EU-fun­ded pro­ject Sinfonia, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te was re­spons­ible for ad­vis­ing on and cer­ti­fy­ing ret­ro­fit pro­jects in the de­mon­stra­tion city of Inns­bruck. Fur­ther­more, the in­sti­tu­te de­ve­loped and im­ple­men­ted a meas­ure­ment concept to veri­fy the sav­ings achieved in ap­prox­im­ately 500 homes (Sin­fonia mon­it­or­ing re­port). In ad­di­tion, the top­ics of elec­tric­al en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and the ev­al­u­ation of en­ergy sav­ing po­ten­tial at the neigh­bour­hood level were ex­amined. The res­ults and prac­tic­al im­ple­ment­a­tions de­ve­loped in the pro­ject were shared with the par­ti­cip­at­ing "Early ad­op­ter" cit­ies of Pa­phos (Cyprus), La Rochelle (France), Rosen­heim (Ger­many), Seville (Spain) and Bor­as (Sweden) and in­cor­por­ated in­to con­crete, sus­tain­able en­ergy de­vel­op­ment plans for the re­spect­ive urb­an re­gen­er­a­tion con­cepts.

Report | Energy balance district tool

The aim of the EU-fun­ded pro­ject EuroPHit was to es­tab­lish cri­ter­ia and cer­ti­fic­a­tion op­tions for staged highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient ret­ro­fits in line with the En­erPHit build­ing stand­ard. This was achieved through new soft­ware tools, the de­vel­op­ment of the En­erPHit ret­ro­fit plan, pi­lot pro­jects and train­ing courses for plan­ners and trades­people. It al­lowed the stake­hold­ers (in­clud­ing loc­al au­thor­it­ies, fin­an­cial in­sti­tu­tions and man­u­fac­tur­ers) to im­prove their know­ledge and net­works. At the same time, EuroPHit strongly pro­moted the use of Pass­ive House com­pon­ents in ret­ro­fit pro­jects.

The pro­ject 3ENCULT bridged the gap between the con­ser­va­tion of his­tor­ic build­ings and cli­mate pro­tec­tion as there is no ant­ag­on­ism between these two goals at all: His­tor­ic build­ings will only sur­vive if main­tained as liv­ing space. En­ergy-ef­fi­cient ret­ro­fits are use­ful for struc­tur­al pro­tec­tion as well as for com­fort reas­ons - com­fort for users and “com­fort” for her­it­age col­lec­tions. 3EN­CULT de­mon­strated the feas­ib­il­ity of a “Factor 4” to “Factor 10” re­duc­tion in en­ergy de­mand, de­pend­ing on the case and the her­it­age value.

The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te's first EU pro­ject, CEPH­EUS (Cost Ef­fi­cient Pass­ive Houses as European Stand­ar­ds) was sup­por­ted with­in the frame­work of the THER­MIE Pro­gramme and by the Ger­man State of Hesse. As part of the pro­ject, more than 220 Pass­ive House res­id­en­tial units were built and ev­al­u­ated throughout Europe. The Ger­man re­search re­ports are pub­lished on Passipedia (fil­ter: CEPH­EUS).