Energy Efficiency for Airtightness and Exterior Wall Insulation of Passive Houses in Hot Summer and Cold Winter Zone of China

Abstract: There exists huge differences in climatic conditions and occupant energy-consuming behavior between Berlin and the “hot summer and cold winter zone of China” (HSCW), which implies that the building energy consumption compositions of two regions are completely different. In this paper, dynamic energy consumption simulation for passive houses with Design Builder software was performed. The results indicated that the improvement of building airtightness and exterior wall insulation can reduce annual heating and cooling load effectively, and more importantly the effect is much stronger on heating load than cooling load. Because of this, the paper proposed that the ratio of heating and cooling electricity consumption (r) should be adopted as an important index in energy efficiency evaluation of passive houses. It would contribute to the reasonable selection of ventilation modes and the exterior wall heat transfer coefficient, and benefit the healthy development of passive houses in HSCW.