TITLE:
Efficiency for Sustainability—Smart Energy Management in Social Housing
AUTHORS:
Rolf Katzenbach, Frithjof Clauss, Jie Zheng
KEYWORDS:
Smart Metering, Efficient Management, Sustainability, Social Housing
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Power and Energy Engineering,
Vol.2 No.12,
December
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: An average energy consumption distribution
in household at the worldwide level illustrates that more than three quarters
of total consumption is contributed to room heating and almost 12% to water
heating for all the living necessities. Although a slow fall of domestic energy
consumption has occurred in the recent 20 years (from 1990 to 2011) with a
regular decrease between ?1.2% and ?1.4%/year per dwelling as a result of a
decrease income corresponding to the economic crisis in 2008, whereas energy
prices for households has increase since 2004, the energy cost of paying especially
for space heating and domestic hot water (DHW) supplying is still going up. At
the EU level, the building sector including residential, commercial and other
service buildings is regarded as the key to greater energy efficiency, because
according to statistics the final energy consumption for building sector has
taken the largest proportion about 40% until 2020, which is apparently higher
than the share in transportation sector by 32% and industry sector by 24%. In
the scope of the ongoing research and investigation on energy efficiency in
residential fields and its impact on environment and climate, how to
investigate smart energy management methods for the promotion of sustainable
consumption and green living patterns has been already paid much attention,
however it has to be studied further and thoroughly, especially among energy
consumer groups whose energy costs have no or just little relevance or
dependence on major income source, which leads to a lack of energy saving
awareness by users. Energy consumers living in social housing buildings
represent this kind of energy consumer group which receive the governmental
relief fund as their family income in a great measure, they have different
culture, educational and age backgrounds. This paper presents firstly some
research results based on authors’ practical experiences on the projects about
energy efficiency in social housing buildings in European countries, which is
supposed to be introduced in the aspects of subjective and objective energy
saving potentials. It is proposed to be able to provide valuable and
referential advices exchange our experience on a sustainable development in
affordable housing.