Energy reduction in buildings in temperate and tropic regions utilizing a heat loss measuring device

There exist two ordinary ways to obtain global energy efficiency. One way is to make improvements on the energy production and supply side, and the other way is, in general, to reduce the consume of energy in the society. This paper has focus on the latter and especially the consume of energy for heating up, and cooling down our houses. There is a huge energy saving potential on this area reducing both the World climate problems and economy challenges as well. Heating of buildings in Denmark counts for approximately 40% of the entire national energy consume. Of this reason a reduction of heat losses from building envelopes are of great impor­tance in order to reach the Bologna CO2-emission reduction goals. Energy renovation of buildings is a topic of huge focus around the world these years. Not only expenses for heating in the tempered and arctic regions are of importance, but also expenses to ACMV in the "warm countries" contribute to an enormous energy consumption and corresponding CO2 emission. In order to establish the best basis for energy renovation, it is important to have measures of the heat losses on a building façade, for optimizing the energy renovation. This paper will present a new method for measuring the heat loss by utilizing a so called U-value Meter [Sørensen 2010]. The U-value Meter is a heat loss measuring device and has been used in several energy renovation projects in tempered regions and is now planned to be utilized in the tropics for measuring the heat penetration through facades with the aim to reduce the costs to AC. The paper will introduce a common project between NUS (National University of Singapore), AAU (Aalborg University) and HT-Meter, the latter as the U-value Meter developer company. In the project we will measure the heat transfer in the unit W/Km2 through different facade elements, such as outer walls, entrance doors, windows and roofs on selected buildings. The results will be analysed as basic for improvements of the envelope. A developing of new energy renovation systems and energy renovation principles is expected to be the outcome of the project. Furthermore this paper present results from already conducted heat loss measurements in the temperate regions.