Energy-Efficient Buildings

Energy-efficient buildings play a central role in climate protection: More than 40 % of the end energy demand in Germany is caused by the building sector. We must reduce the energy demand for operating buildings and then meet it with renewable energy sources to the greatest extent possible. This is exactly where Fraunhofer ISE makes its contribution: We offer support for consistent realization of this vision, from building planning through construction to operation.

We conduct research to reduce the demand for space heating and space cooling with optimized building envelopes and to integrate renewable energy sources. New glazing technology, appropriate controls for solar-shading systems and colored glass covers for building-integrated photovoltaics offer diverse options to architects. We develop decentralized ventilation systems and photovoltaic-thermal collectors, e. g. as the source for a heat pump.

Heat pumps are our main focus for supplying heat to buildings. Our work on this technology addresses the entire value chain: from component development for the cooling circuit, through equipment and systems development, to quality assurance in practical operation. Special emphasis is placed on the optimization of heat exchangers and the use of natural refrigerants such as propane.

Thermal storage plays an important role both for the use of fluctuating renewable energy sources in buildings and also for increasing the heating demand flexibility to increase gridsupportive building operation. Storage units for heat and for cooling power are both focal points of our developments.

The digitalization of processes is a key technology for sector coupling and to increase energy efficiency. Planning with digital methods such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) helps to preserve the information flow over the lifecycle of a building with a consistent semantic description. Error analyses based on artificial intelligence and its implementation in hardware and software guarantee a high-quality energy supply on the basis of renewable energy sources.