A review of smart ventilation energy and IAQ performance in residential buildings

In order to better address energy and indoor air quality issues, ventilation needs to become smarter. A key smart ventilation concept is to use controls to ventilate more at times it provides either an energy or IAQ advantage (or both) and less when it provides a disadvantage. This would be done in a manner that provides improved home energy and IAQ performance, relative to a “dumb” base case. A favorable context exists in many countries to develop smart ventilation strategies. As a result, DCV systems are largely and easily available on the market, with more than 20-30 DCV systems approved and available in countries such as Belgium, France and the Netherlands. This paper proposes a literature review on smart ventilation used in residential buildings, developing the energy and indoor air quality performances. Analysis of 38 studies with various smart ventilation systems based on CO2-, humidity-, combined CO2- and TVOC-, occupancy-, outdoor temperature-controlled ventilation and smart ventilation strategies, shows that ventilation energy savings up to 60% could be obtained without compromising, and sometimes improving, IAQ. But that sometimes worst performances were obtained with an order of magnitude of energy savings between -26% and +60%.