An EnOB status seminar with the title "Research for energy-optimised construction" took place last week in Würzburg. Research teams from various fields in energy-optimised construction provided insight into current projects and offered their perspective on future topics within the Federal Ministry of Economics' focus of research. The event covered a wide range of subjects, from innovative facade systems, HVAC concepts/applications and thermal storage systems right through to modelling and the optimisation of operations. The objective was not only to present the state of research, but also to discuss its perspectives.

Even though the steps taken by general building practice in the direction of energy efficiency have been rather cautious and modest so far, researchers have been working with very particular products and technologies for a number of years now. As part of this work, innovative building concepts, building materials, components and systems for new buildings and refurbishment have been tested under everyday conditions and the performance of same has been investigated in detail. The potential for achieving considerable energy savings has been demonstrated here numerous times.

An important point made by the participants at the event, all in all 170 from different research areas and the building sector, is that we must not only focus on further developing individual technologies. It is important we broaden our horizons in several respects. We must not only focus on building services technology, but also on the interaction with the building envelope; similarly, not only focus on the individual building, but also on its interrelationships within the neighbourhood. When looking at how these different approaches interact, it is important to bear in mind the objective of achieving minimal primary energy requirements in combination with high user comfort and ease of operation. The most efficient technologies for reaching this objective must be weighed up against one another and then combined to make an economically viable solution.

EnOB.info

The website www.enob.info shows the various projects and activities of the EnOB research network – Energy-Optimised Construction – in context. The most important demonstration building projects and research activities are given a "business card", which describes them in a compact and concise format, with links to topic-related information, and to the more detailed scientific project description.