The combined impact of thermal renovations and user behaviour on predicting residential heating energy use

This paper compares the calculated heating energy demand to the actual energy use in three existing single family homes. Three case study houses built in 1957, 1965, and 1987, underwent phased thermal renovations and were studied using detailed data collected over several years. The two-storey detached homes with basements are situated in the Austrian Vorarlberger Highlands close to the western Austrian border. The findings from a recent master’s thesis completed at the Research Center of Building Physics and Sound Protection, Vienna University of Technology, compared the estimated to actual residential heating energy use in three existing single family homes. The results discussed below showed that the calculated values exceeded actual energy consumption by up to 35%. The main reasons for the discrepancies between the estimated values in the Austrian energy certificate calculations and the actual consumption showed that detailed input data including information about user behaviour, building services, climate data, and building construction are needed for accurate estimations (Dörn, 2011). The connection between phased thermal renovations and inhabitants’ behaviour on energy consumption in relation to the energy estimates in the energy certificate calculations for individual single family homes are shown