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Innovations needed to measure heat loss via solid walls |
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26 Mar 2015, 8:12 AM
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A competition has been launched to identify tools and technologies that would be capable of rapidly and accurately measuring the heat losses from solid wall homes in the UK.
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There are over seven million solid wall homes in Great Britain that could benefit from insulation. Insulating these types of homes is one of the greatest challenges for energy efficiency policy, but it also potentially offers some of the most significant energy and carbon savings for occupants.
Policies to deliver this work rely on modelled estimates of savings from solid wall insulation, but a tool that could measure the heat transmittance through walls would mean savings could be based on robust, up to date and accurate data.
In order to improve the quality and speed of measurements BRE is seeking innovative solutions for rapidly and accurately measuring wall U-values. The competition opens on 16 March and runs through to 15 May. The winning solution will receive up to £50,000 of funding to support further testing and development of working prototypes.
‘Dealing with solid walls is one of the biggest challenges to delivering energy efficiency in our existing homes. This competition aims to establish a tool that energy assessors can use to quickly and accurately measure the heat losses. Accurate measurement allows us to find out just how effective interventions have been and base future interventions on robust and accurate data.’ says John Riley, Director, Housing and Energy at BRE. "We are looking for solutions from all kinds of places and we’re particularly keen on technology transfer from companies outside the built environment” .
The competition forms part of BRE’s current solid wall research programme which is funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Further details on the competition are available on the BRE website.
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| Positive review of this story |
Edislaw  |
29 Mar 2015, 10:38 AM |
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Tool focused on wrong user The need for a tool for the use of energy assessors demonstrates the lack of technical expertise among the assessors. There is much evidence available already which would enable assessors to measure the heat loss in specific walls but to use it assessors require a knowledge of how to calculate heat loss. In my limited experience thus is lacking and the reliance is on the calculation in the EPC package which is notoriously inaccurate.
What is really needed is an online tool which enables home owners to measure the heat loss of their homes by inputting simple measurements of the different elements. The first result of such a tool would be to enable home owners to check the results of surveys carried out and the claims of installers more interested in profit than accurate results.
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