Energy saving and thermal comfort in Residential buildings with dynamic insulation windows

To realize the concept of low-energy buildings, an increase in the thermal insulation performance of building parts, especially the openings that show poor insulation performance, is necessary. In addition, an adequate level of thermal comfort is also needed within residential buildings. We have developed window-applied dynamic insulation (DI), and verified thermal insulation performance in chamber and field tests. The purpose of this study is to verify the thermal comfort level within residential buildings using DI windows, via measurements obtained from an equivalent temperature-calculated thermal manikin, and to verify energy consumption values in consideration of disturbances by dynamic simulation. The thermal comfort evaluation results showed that, with DI window installation, the equivalent room temperature decreased to approximately 5% of the temperature difference between the exterior and interior. This implies that the effect of the DI window on thermal comfort was small. The dynamic simulation results also showed that the energy consumption reduction reached a value of 2% during a 3-month period at a cold region (Sapporo) in Japan.