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ABSTRACT
During the winter heating season of 2002-2003 and the summer cooling season of 2003, the Canadian Centre for Housing Technology (CCHT) ran a series of trials to determine actual energy savings from thermostat setting in one of its R-2000 test houses. The unique nature of the CCHT Twin House Facility allowed the examination of not only energy savings but also of whole-house performance. During the thermostat experiments, important factors that affect occupant comfort were explored, including air temperature recovery time from setback and setup, house surface temperatures during winter setback, solar effects, and summer house humidity, giving a broad picture of the effects of thermostat setback/setup in a typical R-2000 home.
INTRODUCTION
The Canadian Centre for Housing Technology (CCHT) is jointly operated by the National Research Council Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. CCHT is home to a unique facility of identical two-story R-2000 houses (R-2000 is an official trademark of Natural Resources Canada). These twin houses feature a simulated occupancy program and are fully instrumented with more than 300 sensors. Since its launch in 1998, the facility has been the site of many energy-related side-by-side evaluations of heating and cooling technologies. Evaluated technologies include natural-gas-fired combo systems (Swinton et al. 2000), the electronically commutated motor (Gusdorf et al. 2003), indoor and outdoor blinds (Galasiu et al. 2005), and modified air circulation (Gusdorf et al. 2005).
CCHT researchers identified the need to evaluate the effect of thermostat setting on energy savings in a house built to R-2000 standards using a passive solar strategy. Since the CCHT twin houses are highly energy efficient with a recently measured airtightness of 1.5 air changes per hour at 50 Pa (1.01b/ft^sup 2^), slow decreases in indoor temperature during a setback were anticipated, and so the benefits of thermostat setback were expected to be minimal. By the same token, summer heat gains through the 16.2 m^sup 2^ (174 ft^sup 2^) of southfacing low-e-coated argon-filled windows were expected to be substantial, so large benefits from summer setup were expected. The instrumented facility not only allowed for the evaluation of energy savings during the study but also permitted researchers to draw an overall picture of the house's performance. Solar effects, temperature recovery times, and winter surface...