At the beginning of June's issue of MBS magazine, the editor Ken Sharpe discusses the performance gap.
He says, "the competence of building-services engineers in delivering buildings with an actual energy consumption that bears any relationship at all to the predicted energy consumption was recently thrown into focus by a widely reported study from the University of Bath about the 'performance gap.'
It is widely known that the actual energy use of a building can be 200 to 450% greater than predicted by building modelling.
The study by the University of bath suggests that many non-domestic buildings in the UK often use 'twice as much energy and emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the professionals who designed them predicted.' The study also observes, 'this massive under-estimation of how much energy a building will use is a problem because the UK's buildings account for nearly 50% of the nations greenhouse-gas emissions.'
The basis of a research project by the Building research establishment is that the reasons for the performance gap are generally unknown.
The overall performance gap has two components – the compliance gap and the actual performance gap. The compliance gap is estimated to be 50 to 70% of the overall gap and can be solved by more realistic modelling to more closely reflect the conditions in operation.
The larger actual performance gap is more of a mystery, with much speculation and hypothesis, but little speculation and hard evidence – which is why BRE has proposed a research project.
Read the latest magazine here: http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk//launch.aspx?eid=01365b0a-a1e3-4a10-b1e1-820709396eb8
