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How are UK homes heated? A city-wide, socio-technical survey and implications for energy modelling
journal contribution
posted on 2015-02-10, 14:41 authored by Tom Kane, Steven FirthSteven Firth, Kevin LomasKevin LomasUnderstanding heating patterns in UK homes is crucial for energy policy formulation, the design of new controls and heating systems, and for accurate stock modelling. Metrics to describe heating patterns are proposed along with methods for calculating them from measured room temperatures. The patterns of heating in 249 dwellings in Leicester, UK are derived from measured hourly temperatures and a face-to-face socio-technical survey. Of the 93% of homes that were centrally heated, 51% were heated for two periods each day and 33% were heated for only one period per day. The mean winter temperature in the rooms varied from 9.7°C to 25.7°C. Heating patterns varied significantly and systematically depending on the age of the householders and their employment status. Compared to younger households and those in employment, households with occupants over 60 and those unable to work, turned their heating on earlier in the year, heated for longer each day, and heated to higher temperatures. The indoor temperatures were much lower than those customarily assumed by BREDEM-based energy models and patterns of heating were quite different. Such models could seriously and systematically misrepresent the benefits of energy efficiency measures to some sectors of society.
Funding
The 4M consortium is funded by the Engineering and PhysicalSciences Research Council (EPSRC) under their Sustainable Urban Environment programme [grant EP/F007604/1].
History
School
- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
Energy and BuildingsVolume
86Pages
817 - 832Citation
KANE, T., FIRTH, S.K. and LOMAS, K.J., 2015. How are UK homes heated? A city-wide, socio-technical survey and implications for energy modelling. Energy and Buildings, 86, pp.817-832.Publisher
ElsevierVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2014-10-05Publication date
2014-10-14Copyright date
2015Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
0378-7788Publisher version
Language
- en