Robustness and True Performance of Demand Controlled Ventilation in Educational Buildings – Review and Needs for Future Development

Although theoretical studies show that energy use for ventilation purposes can be reduced by more than 50% with DCV compared to CAV, evaluation of real energy use demonstrates that this potential is seldom met. DCV-based ventilation systems must become more reliable to close the gap between theoretical and real energy-performance. This unfortunate experience with DCV seems to have many causes, including: unclear placement of system responsibility, inadequate specifications and hand-over documentation, balancing report not suitable for DCV, communication errors and lack of knowledge about DCV-systems among decision makers, designers and operators etc. Identified key factors for improvement so far are adequate specifications, hand-over documentation and balancing report for DCV and a clearly defined and placed responsibility for the overall functionality. This paper presents a recently started project that will last until 2013 and aims to develop and disseminate knowledge on systems with improved robustness.