Characterising the Actual Thermal Performance of Buildings: Current Results of Common Exercises Performed in the Framework of the IEA EBC Annex 58-Project

Several studies have shown that actual thermal performance of buildings after construction may deviate significantly from that anticipated at design stage. As a result, there is growing interest in full scale testing of components and whole buildings. The IEA EBC Annex 58-project ‘Reliable Building Energy Performance Characterisation Based on Full Scale Dynamic Measurements’ is developing the necessary knowledge and tools to achieve reliable in-situ dynamic testing and data analysis methods that can be used to characterise the actual thermal performance and energy efficiency of building components and whole buildings.

The research within this project is driven by case studies. As a first simple case, an experiment on testing and data analysis is performed on a round robin test box. This test box can be seen as a scale model of a building, built by one of the participants, with fabric properties unknown to all other participants.

Full scale measurements have been performed on the test box in different countries under real climatic conditions. The obtained dynamic data are distributed to all participants who have to try to characterise the thermal performance of the test box's fabric based on the provided data. This paper presents the first results obtained on the round robin exper ment.

It is shown how different techniques can be used to characterise the thermal performance of the test box, ranging from a simple stationary analysis to advanced dynamic data analysis methods.