Introduction of flexible monitoring equipment into the Greenlandic building sector

Description

Greenlandic winters are long and cold so living inside a heated and properly ventilated space requires quite some energy. It is assumed that in mechanically ventilated buildings, significant amounts of energy for heating can be conserved by adjusting ventilation flow rates according to the actual demand of occupants. Traditional solutions available on a market consist of a controller and the sensors in a living space detecting occupancy and activity (movement sensors, CO2 sensors, Humidity sensors, etc.). The controller needs to be programmed and maintained by an expert and the sensors need to be hardwired to the controller. In Greenland where price of labor is very high and availability of experts is limited, installation of such control system becomes expensive. Particularly in case of renovation of existing buildings the costs of hardwiring the sensors can be very high. One possible solution to the above is to use wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies. A prototype wireless monitoring and control system is demonstrated on a renovation of a ventilation system in the new dormitory Apisseq in Sisimiut, Greenland. The existing mechanical ventilation was running at a constant air flow even during unoccupied hours which resulted in a very high heat demand. It was estimated that installing the WSN system will bring annual savings of 1,600 € at the investment of 8,000 €. This paper describes a setup of the system and discusses its advantages and drawbacks.

Period	8 Apr 2014
Event title	Artek Conference 2014
Event type	Conference
Organiser	The Arctic Technology Centre
Location	Sisimiut, GreenlandShow on map