What we do

This page provides a brief overview of what we do at the Energy House.  We are constantly increasing the capacity to collect and analyse data.

Monitoring

The Energy House is an exceptionally flexible test facility and this is reflected in its monitoring system.  A wide range of sensors and configurations are available.  In this way, every test set-up is unique.  A typical set-up for an experiment is given below: (click on  the image of table of sensors to view in a larger format)

The data is fed through a wired network to a server.  From here the data is collected and analysed using custom software. This can then be accessed by researchers working on campus or remotely via a webpage. Real time analysis and calculation can be carried out which aids the prediction of  thermal constants and indicates when steady-state conditions occur during experiments.

Comfort data

Air velocities and black globe temperatures can be recorded for each room in the house, this can feed into most thermal comfort calculation methods, this data is invaluable when comparing different type of heating systems, and also for pre an post measurement of fabric interventions such as internal wall insulation.

Electricity, gas and water monitoring

Consumption of electricity gas and water is also monitored, directly from the mains incoming meters.  Appliance monitoring is undertaken using industry standard Zigbee Pro wireless smart meter plug devices, which have continually measure of kWh, Watts, Amps and Volts to three decimal places with an accuracy better than +/- 0.5%.

Industry standard water flow meters have been fitted to the toilet feed, shower and bath feed, washing machine and kitchen sink. Separate flow metering can be applied at any stage to measure waste water flow.

Energy output monitoring

Each heat emitter (radiator in most tests) is fitted with a Measuring Instruments Directive (MID) approved heat meter, this allows the researchers insight into how much power is being input into each of the rooms and allows comparisons to be made on different heat emitters and heating systems.

Appliance monitoring

The Energy House is fully furnished and has the following appliances installed: TV, electric fire, fridge freezer, cooker etc.  All of these devices are monitored to an appliance level; this helps with isolating energy consumption, and has been invaluable when carrying out tests where an appliance’s consumption may be key, such as voltage optimisation technologies.