Renewable Energy 28 (2003) 321–328

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Technical note
Development of a database of low energy
homes around the world and analyses of their
trends
Yasuhiro Hamada ∗, Makoto Nakamura, Kiyoshi Ochifuji,
Shintaro Yokoyama, Katsunori Nagano
Division of Urban and Environmental Engineering,Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido
University, N13-W8, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan

Received 12 August 2001; accepted 7 February 2002

Abstract

This study aims to develop a database of low energy techniques for homes around the world,
for use in systematically evaluating the low energy home in each region, where climate, culture
and policy differ. First, a database was made for the purpose of the systemizing passive and
active techniques. Data were input according to seven chapters and 155 items, and 66 homes
in 17 nations have been recorded. Homes adopting super insulation, high airtightness and solar
energy utilization are common in the each country. The thermal insulation performance of
wall and window of the housing in Japan is somewhat inferior to that overseas. It was shown
that exhaust heat recovery is rarely adopted in Japan and that the underground thermal energy
utilization was seen in less than 10% of recorded homes. Second, recorded homes were catego-
rized according to characteristics of adopted strategies, and the reduction rate of purchased
energy versus the purchased energy for a typical home was calculated. This revealed the
purchased energy reduction rate of homes with both solar heat utilization and photovoltaic
power generation to be very high.  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Low energy home; Renewable energy; Hybrid system

∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-11-706-6286; fax: +81-11-707-6585.
E-mail address: hamada@eng.hokudai.ac.jp (Y. Hamada).

0960-1481/03/$ - see front matter  2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 0 - 1 4 8 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 1 - 9
 Y. Hamada et al. / Renewable Energy 28 (2003) 321–328

1. Introduction

2. Database of low energy homes in the world

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3. Analyses of regional characteristics

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4. Conclusions