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This guide, released by the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ), is a literature review of recent research on indoor air quality that is relevant to New Zealand’s indoor environments (residential houses, schools, preschools and age care facilities). The document looks at the health effects, the pollutants and the building characteristics. Where possible, New Zealand research is presented. Emphasis is placed on gaps in the knowledge in order to identify future research in New Zealand.

Welcome to the 'Blue Pages'. This is where the Editorial Advisory Panel for Building Services Engineering Research and Technology publishes state-of-the-art articles on developments in building services engineering practice and research. The articles are very short, on one theme of current interest, and are edited by a guest editor rather than going through the longer refereeing process for conventional research papers. This is to encourage consultants and contractors to discuss their latest developments in a non-commercial manner.

The tenth issue of the AIVC newsletter, released in September 2016 . Contents include:

The Proceedings of the 36th AIVC Conference " Effective ventilation in high performance buildings", held in Madrid, Spain, 23-24 September 2015.

The Presentations at the 36th AIVC Conference " Effective ventilation in high performance buildings", held in Madrid, Spain, 23-24 September 2015.

Building performance simulation has the potential to quantitatively evaluate design alternatives and various energy conservation measures for retrofit projects. However before design strategies can be evaluated, accurate modeling of existing conditions is crucial. This paper extends current model calibration practice by presenting a probabilistic method for estimating uncertain parameters in HVAC systems for whole building energy modeling. Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, probabilistic estimates of the parameters in two HVAC models were generated for use in EnergyPlus.

The exponential increase of the cooling demand in buildings obliges to find alternatives to the high electricity consumption with air conditioning systems. This work investigates a new cooling system based on evaporation. The key component of this system is a porous tank filled with water. Evaporation process occurs at the outside surface, which cools down water in the tank. Fresh water is then used to meet the cooling demand in the building. To model the impact of this new system, an accurate model of the porous tank is needed.

This paper presents a simulation-based study of a decentralized, „low-exergy‟ (or LowEx) space cooling system for a commercial office currently under construction in Singapore. We used asdesigned building and system characteristics to parametrize a TRNSYS simulation model of the energy supply system. We also compared the performance of the LowEx air-conditioning system against a conventional air handling unit.

In this paper, possibilities of electric peak load reductions in the MENA-Region, using a photovoltaic powered air conditioning system for residential buildings, are considered. For this purpose, a smallscale photovoltaic plant is simulated and compared with the electric power demand of a simulated air conditioning unit. While the demand of the A/C unit is more than three times higher than the yield, the mismatch is used to introduce a possible smaller A/C unit. There, the thermal performance is observed under maximum usage of the solar energy yield.

In some areas of high air condition adoption there is potential for night purge natural ventilation to reduce the number of hours that the air condition system is operated, leading to a reduction in energy usage and associated carbon dioxide emissions. In this study we examine the potential efficacy of such a strategy implemented in an office building located in Pune, India. Using a dynamic thermal model we have demonstrated that around 10% annual cooling load saving can be achieved.