Results of Monitoring a Naturally Ventilated and Passively Cooled Office Building in Frankfurt a.M., Germany

In this article the concept of a new energy-efficient office building and results of a 3-year monitoring are described. The monitoring was performed within the German funding pro-gramme EnOB [1]. In this building most of the offices are naturally ventilated and passively cooled. One aspect of the passive cooling is the nocturnal ventilation operated automatically by the buildings control system. Another focus of the energy concept is on regenerative heat-ing with wooden pellets.
Monitoring results show that the integrated planning enabled a very low consumption of en-ergy for heating, ventilation, cooling and lighting. The monitoring could help to reveal operat-ing problems and to lower the usage of energy. Though passively cooled, the rooms provided good thermal conditions. The given limits of room temperatures were exceeded only in an acceptable manner. Good air quality could be achieved just by natural ventilation.
In this article first the building and energy concept is described. Then results of the monitor-ing are shown, with a focus on the passive cooling concept and the achieved user comfort.