Floor cooling and air-cooling, the effects on thermal comfort of different cooling systems

One of the research areas of the Energy research Centreof the Netherlands (ECN) concerns the built environment.Several facilities to conduct research activitiesare at ECNs disposal. One of these facilities, are five research dwellings located on the premises of ECN. Measured data from these facilities together with weather data and computer models are used to evaluate innovative energy concepts and components in energy systems. Experiments with different cooling systems in ECNs research dwellings are executed to evaluate their effective influence on both energy use and thermal comfort.Influence of inhabitants behaviour is taken into accountin these experiments. The thermal comfort is indicatedby the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) as defined by P.O. Fanger. For this paper, the results of measurements with a floor cooling and air cooling system are assessed. Effects on the PMV measured during experiments with the two different cooling systems will be presented.