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Spear­head­ing re­search and prac­tice

As an in­ter­na­tion­ally lead­ing and, above all, prac­tice-ori­en­ted re­search centre, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te has been in­volved in many highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient pi­lot pro­jects for dec­ades. Among oth­er things, it provided build­ing phys­ics con­sult­ing and sci­en­tif­ic sup­port for the first Pass­ive House of­fice build­ing (in Cölbe), the first Pass­ive House fact­ory (in Ben­sheim), the first Pass­ive House school (in Frank­furt a. M.), the first Pass­ive House swim­ming pools (in Bam­berg and Lün­en), and the first Pass­ive House ret­ro­fits (in Nur­em­berg, Frank­furt a. M., and Lud­wig­shafen).

The wealth of know­ledge and ex­per­i­en­ce is also con­tinu­ously be­ing ex­pan­ded through nu­mer­ous re­search pro­jects at re­gion­al, na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al levels.

The re­search res­ults of the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te as well as many valu­able guides can be found in our nu­mer­ous technical publications.

Re­search pro­jects (se­lec­tion)

In the AchieveVE-ZEB pro­ject, which is fun­ded by the European Uni­on, teach­ing con­tent from ex­ist­ing and fur­ther edu­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions is re­viewed in terms of their tech­nic­al con­tent and ex­pan­ded to in­clude the latest re­search find­ings and cur­rent best prac­tice ex­amples. The ex­pert­ise avail­able with­in the con­sor­ti­um on core top­ics such as step-by-step ret­ro­fits, en­ergy-ef­fi­cient build­ing ser­vices, ret­ro­fits with mod­u­lar pre­fab­ric­ated ele­ments, sum­mer com­fort, cli­mate re­si­li­en­ce, re­cyc­lab­il­ity, and life cycle as­sess­ments, are taken in­to ac­count in the up­dat­ing, sup­ple­ment­a­tion and qual­ity as­sur­ance of teach­ing con­tent for aca­dem­ics and trades­people.

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The Work­ing Group on Cost-Ef­fect­ive Pass­ive Houses was foun­ded in 1996 with sup­port from the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics of the Ger­man State of Hesse. The work­ing group aims to bet­ter con­nect the­ory and prac­tice with key ques­tions tackled re­lat­ing to en­ergy-ef­fi­cient con­struc­tion and cost ef­fect­ive­ness. The res­ults are pub­lished in minutes volumes, some of which are avail­able for download free of charge (Ger­man only).

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COM­PLETED | The out­PHit pro­ject, which was fun­ded by the European Uni­on, bridged the per­form­ance gap between re­search and prac­tice by de­vel­op­ing solu­tions for com­mon chal­lenges in ret­ro­fits and de­mon­strat­ing their im­ple­ment­a­tion in ex­ample pro­jects throughout Europe. The out­PHit con­sor­ti­um fo­cused on pro­cess-op­tim­ised ret­ro­fits us­ing highly pre­fab­ric­ated com­pon­ents. It offered sup­port and qual­ity as­sur­ance in all sev­en part­ner coun­tries to en­sure that the res­ults of the ex­ample ret­ro­fits com­plied with Pass­ive House prin­ciples and tar­geted the strict en­ergy re­quire­ments of the En­erPHit stand­ard, the Pass­ive House stand­ard for ret­ro­fits.

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COM­PLETED | The EU pro­ject Built2Spec aimed at clos­ing the gap between plan­ning and the ac­tu­al ef­fi­ciency of the fin­ished build­ings. As tab­lets and smart­phones play a cent­ral role in the plan­ning pro­cess, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te con­trib­uted its ex­pert­ise in highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient con­struc­tion and qual­ity as­sur­ance to the de­vel­op­ment of a BIM-based plat­form and its in­ter­faces with the plan­ning and design tools PHPP and design­PH. Built2Spec re­ceived fund­ing with­in the EU Frame­work Pro­gramme for Re­search and In­nov­a­tion ‘Ho­ri­zon 2020’.

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COM­PLETED | The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te par­ti­cip­ated in the EU-fun­ded pro­ject Sinfonia, which in­volved ad­vis­ing on and cer­ti­fy­ing ret­ro­fit pro­jects in the de­mon­stra­tion cit­ies of Inns­bruck and Bolzano. The in­sti­tu­te was also in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­ment­a­tion of a meas­ure­ment concept to veri­fy the sav­ings achieved in ap­prox­im­ately 500 homes. In ad­di­tion, the top­ics of elec­tric­al en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and the ev­al­u­ation of en­ergy sav­ing po­ten­tial at the neigh­bour­hood level were ex­amined. The res­ults and prac­tic­al im­ple­ment­a­tions de­ve­loped in the pro­ject were shared with the par­ti­cip­at­ing "Early ad­op­ter" cit­ies of Pa­phos (Cyprus), La Rochelle (France), Rosen­heim (Ger­many), Seville (Spain) and Bor­as (Sweden) and in­cor­por­ated in­to con­crete, sus­tain­able en­ergy de­vel­op­ment plans for the re­spect­ive urb­an re­gen­er­a­tion con­cepts.

Report | Energy balance district tool

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COM­PLETED | The Train-to-NZEB pro­ject aimed to provide world-class train­ing on en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and re­new­able en­ergy in build­ings. Newly com­piled cur­ricula were im­ple­men­ted in newly cre­ated edu­ca­tion and ad­vis­ory centres (Build­ing Know­ledge Hubs) in vari­ous European coun­tries. Busi­ness plans for each train­ing centre and up-to-date train­ing mod­els form the basis for sus­tain­able suc­cess. The pro­ject im­proved know­ledge and skills in the con­struc­tion sec­tor through prac­tic­al train­ing, de­mon­stra­tions and com­pre­hens­ive con­sult­ing ser­vices on the plan­ning and con­struc­tion of nearly zero-en­ergy build­ings (NZEB) us­ing re­new­able en­er­gies, based on the Pass­ive House concept.

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COM­PLETED | The aim of the EU-fun­ded pro­ject EuroPHit was to es­tab­lish cri­ter­ia and cer­ti­fic­a­tion op­tions for staged highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient ret­ro­fits in line with the En­erPHit build­ing stand­ard. This was achieved through new soft­ware tools, pi­lot pro­jects and train­ing courses for plan­ners and trades­people. It al­lowed the stake­hold­ers (in­clud­ing loc­al au­thor­it­ies, fin­an­cial in­sti­tu­tions and man­u­fac­tur­ers) to im­prove their know­ledge and net­works. At the same time, EuroPHit strongly pro­moted the use of Pass­ive House com­pon­ents in ret­ro­fit pro­jects.

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