Energy Monitoring of a Thermally Massive Passive Solar Residence by the PSTAR Approach

This paper reports the application of the PSTAR (Primary and Secondary Terms Analysis and Renormalization) method to a thermally massive passive solar house located in Daejeon, Korea. The house has approximately 156 m² of living area with three bedrooms and a living room, which embodies many passive solar features for energy conservation. The primary concern of this work was to properly evaluate the thermal behavior of a thermally massive building structure using the PSTAR method. Results show close agreements between the measured and renormalized values reflecting the effects of heavy thermal mass, whereas the simulation results from the audit description of the house deviate somewhat considerably.