NEARLY ZERO ENERGY BUILDINGS ERASMUS PLUS PROJECT NZEB

NEARLY ZERO ENERGY BUILDINGS ERASMUS PLUS PROJECT “NZEB FOR ENHANCING STEM SKILLS AND MOTIVATING STUDENTS”, 2015 -1 -IT 02 -KA 219 -015139.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES • The project involves students and teachers from eight European schools and aims at offering new learning opportunities to students, in an effort to prepare them for life and understanding how we can make the use of electrical energy more efficient, if this is necessary. Moreover, the project is an opportunity for the teachers involved to develop professionally, because it challenges them to come up with ideas and it requires them to combine their knowledge, experience and expertise.

LEARNING THROUGH EXPERIMENTS • While testing and putting different experimental ideas into practicerelated with the project objectives -, we were able to see that the students were much more involved and curious about the subject matter than in theoretical learning circumstances. Furthermore, we also found that hands-on activities work is not only a very useful motivational tool, but it also develops the thinking skills of our students, such as problem solving and reasoning, since they do not only apply knowledge and skills learned in one subject to another, but also reinforce and synthesize information and ideas from a range of sources.

THE TRAINING KIT COMPRISES SIX PROPOSALS OF EXPERIMENTS DIRECTLY RELATED WITH THE PROJECT OBJECTIVES • 1. Stimulate interest in students towards the knowledge proposed by experimenting, with forms of learning on the job in real situations • 2. Raise awareness of students and staff of the school to adopt a different behaviour that will lead to a more rational use of energy • 3. Involve institutions to invest in energy saving in order to free up resources that could be used in future projects for schools • 4. Develop a collaborative learning, using the expertise and knowledge of others (classmates, teachers and professionals) • 5. Acquire skills in the use of a Content Management System and software for the control and calculation of energy losses, data processing, spreadsheets and presentations

EFFICIENCY OF PHOTOVOLTAIC (PV) CELLS • Solar panels convert radiation energy of the sun into electrical energy. • Solar panels contribute to a sustainable energy production, because they reduce the need for conventional fuels like coal and gas. Thus decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide and other air pollution agents being expelled into the air.

MEASURING THE SOLAR FLUX DENSITY • Pyranometers are widely used by weather and climate scientists to monitor the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth at a specific location and time. • The name Pyranometer is derived from the Greek “Pyr” which means “fire” and “ano” which means “heaven”. • Pyranometers are used to monitor the solar radiation flux density in Watts per square meter (W. m-2). Professional pyranometers are very expensive, and very delicate. But you can build your own pyranometer with materials found at your local hardware store.

A DIY PYRANOMETER

INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULB VS LED LIGHT COMPARING THE EFFICIENCY • . Light allows us to see, create a comfortable environment, be safe and secure. The lighting techniques - the ways you arrange lights - and the lamps - the light bulbs - you choose for the rooms in your home or office will make a difference in your comfort level and energy use. • When choosing many appliances, consumers can compare Energy Guide labels, telling them how much it will cost each year to operate the appliance. This information allows people to choose an appliance at a higher initial cost if they know it's more efficient and will save them money in the long run. Not so with lamps. It is more difficult to calculate efficiency and savings because of the different lighting technologies. • LEDs increasingly are being purchased to replace incandescent and other types of bulbs. LEDs are relatively more expensive than other types of bulbs, but are very cost-effective because they use only a fraction of the electricity of traditional lighting methods and can last far longer.

WIND TURBINES EFFICIENCY • A wind turbine is a device that converts the wind's kinetic energy into electrical power. Wind turbines are manufactured in a wide range of vertical and horizontal axis types. • The smallest turbines are used for applications such as battery charging for auxiliary power for boats or caravans or to power traffic warning signs. Slightly larger turbines can be used for making contributions to a domestic power supply while selling unused power back to the utility supplier via the electrical grid. • Arrays of large turbines, known as wind farms, are becoming an increasingly important source of intermittent renewable energy and are used by many countries as part of a strategy to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY • Different materials have different thermal behaviour. The thermal conductivity of most building materials can be found online or in reference books. When designing a building, it is very important to take these parameters in consideration. Especially n. ZEB buildings need to be as conservative with energy as possible. • Heat is a form of energy that can move from one to another location. There are three ways in which heat can be transported. • • Conduction (in solid materials) Convection (in liquids and gases) Radiation (like the rays from the sun, no intermediate material is needed)

HOW WELL DO MATERIALS TRANSPORT HEAT?

HEAT TRANSFER THROUGH A MATERIAL • If you want to decrease the loss of thermal energy out of a building into the environment you need to address all of the three point mentioned above. • Buildings are most likely build using a combination of different materials. The combination of these materials can have a large effect on thermal efficiency of a building. Because combining different materials is quit cumbersome, you will only investigate single homogenous materials.

MAKING THERMAL RADIATION VISIBLE • FLIR stands for Forward Looking Infra. Red. These kind of cameras are often used in military and civil applications. In this experiment you are going to use an infrared camera to detect and investigate “Hotspots” in a building. A Hotspot is a location where heat is leaking out of the building. • Infra. Red radiation is invisible to the human eye but we can make it visible by using a tool, a so called FLIR camera. The camera is very sensitive to Infra. Red radiation. The IR camera is able to detect EM waves that are being emitted by warm objects. This is very different from how a normal camera works, the latter detects the EM waves that have been reflected by an object. There is a relation between the peak wavelength an object emits and the temperature of the object.

BIBLIOGRAPHY • Authors : experiments and Portfolio Jan Chris van Osnabrugge and Hilgo Wempe Foreword: Georgeta Dinca • Anca Gabriela Barbulescu