Edinburgh Napier University

  This document presents a review of four years of delivered energy demand of selected dwellings at the Housing Innovation Showcase (HIS) developed by Kingdom Housing Association (KHA). It also includes results of the building performance bi-annual monitoring, used for comparing against design aspirational energy demand calculations.
The results show that throughout the years of occupation, a pattern of consumption has emerged, which distinctly divides early occupation and the latter years after this period of adjustment.
The study has benefited from a low occupant changeover, meaning most of the families that occupied the dwellings at the start of the study in 2012 have remained in their home until the end of the monitoring in January 2017. Only two dwellings have experienced a changeover of occupants which can be unusual in social rented accommodation. This consistent dwelling demographic, benefits the study as it helps to understand the household energy consumption without drastic changes to the occupant type and size, which often can influence longitudinal delivered energy demand studies.
Likewise there are differences in envelope performance. Thirteen of the homes in this 27 plot development underwent wall in-situ U-value evaluation and air permeability testing over the period of pre and post occupation. Results demonstrate a decline in performance, albeit small in these early years of occupation, but concerning if analysed over the life time of the dwellings.
Although this study includes a small sample size, it has demonstrated that compliance models used at the design stage aren’t suitable for estimating dwellings with highly specified heating and ventilation technology or renewable sources of energy. The energy demand of these dwellings differs highly to the predictions made at the design stage, whereas the more traditional dwellings with simplified technology for heating purposes and without renewable fuel sources differed less so to the estimations.