Is space heating in offices really necessary?

• New office buildings in Sweden are thoroughly insulated due to the Swedish building code. This code, however, does not consider the type of activity occurring in the building. This means that the heating equipment is designed as if no activity at all is going on. In modern offices there is a lot of equipment installed which uses electricity. This electricity is converted into heat which can be utilized for heating the premises, mostly in a direct way but also by the use of exhaust-air heat-pumps or heat exchangers. This paper deals with a modern office building plus office hotel complex located in Linköping, Sweden, about 200 km south of Stockholm. The tenants deal with the design of hard- and software for computers. The lighting and computers in the building use electricity which converts into heat. In this paper, it is shown that this electricity is all that is needed during normal conditions, i.e. when people work in the building. The building is also equipped with a district-heating system, which is designed as if no activity goes on in the building, so subsequently the heating equipment is larger than it need be. In this special case, it might have been better to install an electric heating device for hot-water heating and very cold winter conditions, instead of using district heating. This is so even if district heat is about half the unit price compared with that due to the dissipation of electricity. At present, when district heating is used, no measures for saving heat can be profitable due to the low district-heating price. The fact is that the tenants complain of too much heat instead of too little: the prevailing indoor temperature was about 24° C in January 1990 even though 20° C would have been sufficient. There is subsequently a need for a properly working regulation system. The one currently in use is designed to a modern standard, but is not able to maintain temperatures at a modest level.

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