Passive house design—An efficient solution for residential buildings in Romania

In a temperate climate such as that of Romania, due to the high differences between comfort parameters and temperate environmental conditions, energy is needed in order to achieve a comfortable indoor environment in both winter and summer. Yet, due to the higher initial investment cost, in Romania, the new solutions for highly energy efficient buildings are rarely used. In order to increase the awareness of the investors on the long-term advantages of these solutions, pilot projects are necessary that provide real-time monitoring on the energy performance and behaviour of energy efficient buildings. At the Politehnica University of Timisoara, an experimental programme was developed to demonstrate that applying passive house design principles could be an alternative solution for energy-efficient buildings, reflecting the Romanian local climate conditions, materials, and construction techniques. An energy-efficient house was built following the passive house design principles and was subjected to extensive monitoring. In the design phase, the discussed house is compared to a reference house designed following the energy efficiency requirements in Romania, in order to emphasise the differences in terms of energy demand and life-cycle cost. The life-cycle cost analysis results are dependent on the future growth of energy prices. The study contains the results from the monitoring campaign of the energy efficient house, including the monitoring of the energy consumption as well as of the indoor parameters. The monitoring results indicate that the studied house is meeting the passive house design target of total primary energy requirement of less than 120 kWh/m 2 year.