Research in the Buiding Science Group

Considerations about a future energy supply strategy cannot be made without taking the development in the building sector into account, which currently consumes 40% of the European primary energy. From a planners point of view – especially regarding comfort and the quality of indoor environments – the end use of energy for climate conditioning and lighting is interesting. A key role in reducing the energy use in buildings lies within the existing building stock. In this context we work on the following subjects:

Energy

• Monitoring and performance analysis of buildings (benchmarking, energetic operation optimisation)
• Integral building and energy concepts, simulation-based system optimisation, integration of solar systems

Indoor quality 

• User satisfaction at workplaces (surveys, comfort indices)
• Comfort (thermal, visual) and user behaviour under transient conditions (experiments in KIT's indoor climate test facility LOBSTER, field studies)

The fbta and its projects are fully integrated into to the different areas of competence within the KIT. Prof. Wagner is the spokesperson of topic 4 “Efficient energy-use” for the KIT Energy Center. Further important partners in research are at other universities as well as at external research institutes in Germany and abroad (see Projects).