Newsletter Issue 4/2013

July 2013  

REHVA Community News

57th REHVA General Assembly

During the 57th REHVA General Assembly, the former President Michael Schmidt thanked the members of the board having contributed to his presidential term as good collaborators.The President-elect Karel Kabele was installed as the new President. He and the Assembly warmly thanked Michael Schmidt for his important contribution to REHVA’s development during his term.

Mr Valentin Tonu, the representative of the Moldavian Association, AIIRM, was presented by the President as observer during the 57th General Assembly. The proposal was made to accept Moldavia as new member in 2014.

President Karel Kabele informed the audience that the next REHVA Annual Meeting will take place in Düsseldorf (Germany) from 28-30 April 2014, the REHVA Annual Meeting 2015 in Riga (Latvia) from 7 till 9 May 2015 and the next CLIMA Congress will be organized by DANVAK and take place in Aalborg (Denmark) from 22 till 26 May 2016.

REHVA elects new Board

On 15 June 2013, the General Assembly elected through a voting process four new board members : Ioan Silviu Dobosi–AIIR (Romania) is re-elected, Jarek Kurnitski–EKVU (Estonia) is re-elected, Manuel Gameiro da Silva–Ordem dos Engenheiros (Portugal) and Frank Hovorka–AICVF (France) were elected. Lars Nielsen–DANVAK (Denmark) is elected as reserve board member. The President was the first to congratulate the elected members with their board membership and their responsibilities.

The new REHVA board after the elections, from left to right: Jarek Kurnitski, Zoltan Magyar, Frank Hovorka, Paolo S. Corgnati, Karel Kabele,Jan Aufderheijde, Ioan Silviu Dobosi, Manuel Gameiro da Silva

REHVA 50th Anniversary Gala dinner

This year marked the 50th Anniversary of REHVA. To celebrate this important event, a festive Gala Dinner was organized on Saturday June 15th in a prestigious venue of high quality cuisine and service, the Art Nouveau Francouzska restaurant located in Prague Municipal house. The 200 guests enjoyed a pleasant evening enriched by live piano or jazz music. Large poster boards with pictures of all the most important events of the last 50 years were displayed in the restaurant.  During this evening the REHVA former President, Michael Schmidt gave a short overview of these 50 years. REHVA received nice plaques from President-elect of ASHRAE Bill Bahnfleth and Pawel Wargocki from ISIAQ. Moreover, a wise owl was given by Marianne Brodacht and Yuri Tabunschikov from ABOK to commemorate this golden anniversary.

On this occasion, the following members of REHVA national associations received a REHVA Award: Mrs Lisje Schellen (TVVL–The Netherlands) and Mr Miroslav Urban (STP–Czech republic) received a REHVA Young Scientist Award; Mrs Otilia Lulkovicova (SSTP – Slovakia) was recognized for her outstanding achievements in design and for her contribution to improve energy efficiency and the indoor environment of buildings; Mr Miroslav Kotrbaty (STP – Czech Republic) was recognized for his outstanding achievements in technology and for his contribution to improve energy efficiency and the indoor environment of buildings; former REHVA President Prof. Michel Schmidt (VDI – Germany) and Mr Teet Kõiv (EKVÜ – Estonia) were recognized for their outstanding achievements in science and for their contributions to improve energy efficiency and the indoor environment of buildings.

CLIMA 2013 news

Mid June 2013, Prague (Czech Republic) was the place to be for HVAC specialists and the "REHVA family". Under leadership of prof. Karel Kabele, our Czech national member organization on Environmental Engineering, STP hosted the REHVA Annual Meeting and the Clima 2013, REHVA’s 11th World Congress on HVAC, with title "Energy Efficient, Smart and Healthy Buildings".

During the opening ceremony, prof. Karel Kabele presented with proud some basic facts of this Clima 2013 congress. All "records" were broken. In Prague, there were more participants (911), more accepted technical & scientific papers (702), more technical sessions (82). And in addition to this, 25 REHVA workshops were held where REHVA gave the floor to its supporters. On average the number of participants was high, and the degree of interaction between speaker(s) and audience too. After Clima 2013, REHVA will produce, with the help of the workshop leaders, a booklet with the topics of each workshop.

During the CCHVAC workshop, prof XU Wei, president CCHVAC could proudly show the Mandarin translation of REHVA Guidebook 7.

Moreover, REHVA’s Supporters Committee organized a lunch for our supporters, hosted by Ioan Silviu Dobosi, chair of the Suporters Commitee. Main topic discussed during this luncheon was how to strengthen the relation between REHVA and their supporters, knowing that both parties stand for a sustainable environment, a healthy indoor climate and an efficient use of energy, especially where the limited resources of fossil fuels concerns.

During the CLIMA 2013 closing ceremony, president Karel Kabele thanked once again all attendees, speakers, presenters of posters etc. for their contributions and participation. And the partners for their (financial) support. REHVA’s Secretary General Jan Aufderheijde thanked in return Karel Kabele for the perfect organization. A standing applause from all audience followed. 

REHVA Student Competition

During the days of Clima 2013, the international REHVA Student Competition was organized. An expert jury of 7 international scientists under leadership of prof. Robert Gavriliuc (Romania), judged the work and presentations of students from 10 member countries. After deliberations and vote counting, the winner was Filipe Ventura from Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal). He received a cheque of 500€, the REHVA student Challenge Trophy, a certificate and a certificate for his University.

Left picture: from left to right: Jan Aufderheijde, Filipe Ventura (Student competition winner), Karel Kabele and Robert Gavriliuc
Right picture:all the students with all the members of the jury

ATIC celebrates its 75th anniversary

ATIC, the Belgium national member association of REHVA celebrated their 75th anniversary on June 7, 2013. The venue of the festivities was the magnificient Colonial Palace in Tervueren. After a welcome address by ATIC’s president, Mr Joris Mampaey, there were several very interesting presentations by Mr J. Schietecat, Mr A. De Herde and Mr C. de Cuyper, all speakers were awarded as honorary member of ATIC for their great contribution to the society.

ATIC presented on this occasion a new logo. After a historic overview over the past 75 years by Mr Mampaey, prof. Jiang Yi from the Tsinghua University Beijing, presented his key note concerning nZEB.

REHVA was represented by Mr Jan Aufderheijde, Secretary General. He congratulated ATIC with this milestone and handed over a plaque on behalf of REHVA. He underlined the active role ATIC played in the start up phase of REHVA, now nearly 50 years ago. ATIC was one of the "founding fathers" and organized several REHVA Annual Meetings and also a Clima 2000 congress. Jan Aufderheijde was pleased to see that ATIC is broader than just HVAC, and also covers other disciplines of Building Services.

EU Policy News

Energy Labelling and Ecodesign Directives - EC review and public consultation

The European Commission is currently conducting a review of the Energy Labelling Directive and certain aspects of the Ecodesign Directive and invites interested stakeholders to participate in an online consultation to be conducted between late August 2013 and late November 2013. The online consultation will include multiple choice questions tailored to different stakeholder groups, and will include many free text fields to provide your views. In addition, a range of interviews will be conducted, and dedicated stakeholder meetings will be organized. The next stakeholder meeting will most likely be in October of this year.
REHVA as an acknowledged stakeholder was invited by DG Energy to submit a 2-page position paper by end of September. The contribution of all REHVA members and supporters is welcome to the position paper. The preparation of the paper will be coordinated by the REHVA Office and the final document has to be approved by the REHVA board before submission. The link itself: http://www.energylabelevaluation.eu/eu/online-survey/  

EU Project News

5th iSERV Newsletter released

The 5th issue of the iSERV Newsletter was just released introducing the next stage of the project, where attention turns from data gathering and setting up the systems to be monitored towards physically inspecting and monitoring the indoor air quality (IAQ) of selected systems in conjunction with their energy consumption. At this stage of the project there are now 156 buildings in the database, 798 HVAC systems and 2975 HVAC components. These cover an area of 585,358 m². The aim of the concurrent testing is to gain confidence in where the benchmark performance standards are being set relative to IAQ, and to test whether the physical inspections are identifying the same problems and opportunities as are being identified from the metered data.
The Newsletter reports also about the iSERV workshop at REHVA’s World Congress CLIMA 2013 held in Prague on June 16 – 19, 2013. iSERV was presented in a well attended 1,5 hour workshop on The Practical Benchmarking of HVAC Systems Energy Efficiency in Use chaired by project coordinator  Professor Ian Knight from the Welsh School of Architecture (UK), and Zoltan Magyar REHVA vice-president. 
SAVE THE DATE: REHVA will organise a joint technical seminar with the iSERV project consortium in Brussels on 13 February 2014.  

Special HVAC Solutions for the Refurbishment of Historic Buildings - 3ENCULT workshop at CLIMA 2013

The 3ENCULT project consortium organised a workshop on special HVAC solutions for the refurbishment of historic buildings developed during the project. Project coordinator Alexandra Troi (EURAC) gave an overview about the main aims, challenges and outcomes of the project pointing out the importance of the multicidsiplinary approach and the involvment of different stakeholders in the planning and implementation of refurbishment of listed buildings. Rainer Pflugler (University of Innsbruck) presented the very interesting case study of the listed Höttinger school building in Innsbruck, where the HVAC system was refurbished and special tailor made solutions applying the local regulations on listed buildings were developed by a multidisciplinary team. 

BUILD UP Users and Stakeholders Committee event

The BUILD UP consortium organised an event during the European Sustainable Energy Week on the 22 June dedicated to national, European and international organisations working to make a positive change in the building sector. REHVA was invited as speaker to the event; Anita Derjanecz Project Officer presented REHVA’s engagement in the BUILD UP portal on the example of the iSERV project. BUILD UP coordinator INIVE/PRACSIS, as well as high level speakers from the Executive Agency for Competitiveness & Innovation (EACI) spoke about the benefits and the potential future of the BUILD UP initiative in the next financial framework period from 2014. The consortium members, key stakeholders and the representatives of the EACI discussed after the public event the new strategic way of the initiative and the portal and some new features and functions of the portal to be introduced in the near future.  The presentations of the public event and the stakeholder meeting minutes are available in the BUILD UP portal. 

Ecodesign News   

Boilers and local space heaters – soon to be all covered by regulations?

After a very long process of preparation, the Ecodesign regulation for gaseous and liquid fuel boilers has been finally approved. For solid fuel boilers, the preparations in ENER Lot 15 started in 2008, and after some delays the work has proceeded towards the final steps. In parallel, also local space heaters (using either liquid, gaseous or solid fuels) have been subject to ecodesign studies in ENER Lot 20, and now it should finally be possible to look at all types of boilers and heaters “in one picture”.

The Regulatory Committee meetings for both Lot 15 and Lot 20 have now been scheduled for 23-24 September, it is important to note some essential changes, including the scope and the list of excluded products. It is also crucial for manufacturers to observe that requirements in both product groups would enter into force in one stage - instead of step by step tightening requirements, now all main requirements would enter into force four years after publishing of the regulation. As a new requirement, stringent limit values for nitrogen oxide emissions has been proposed.

Because of the many changes, it would be important for both Member States and individual manufacturers, as well as manufacturers’ organizations to study the current proposals carefully. The list of National contact points in charge of the implementation of the Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sustainable-business/documents/eco-design/national-contacts/implementation/index_en.htm

Solid fuel boilers (Lot 15):

After the Consultation Forum, there are a few significant changes in the proposed regulation. First of all, the upper limit of rated heat output has been extended from 500 kW to 1000 kW, bringing some new manufacturers within the scope. Also there are less product types excluded from the scope now. For example, Cogeneration space heaters were previously excluded from the scope, and now it is proposed to exclude “solid fuel cogeneration boilers with a maximum electrical capacity of 50 kW or above” .

 There are also changes in the definitions, for example an addition to the “solid fuel boiler” definition:
“has a heat loss to the space it is located in of no more than 6% of rated heat output”;

Local space heaters (Lot 20):

The draft ecodesign regulation establishes ecodesign requirements for the placing on the market and/or putting into service of domestic local space heaters with a nominal heat output equal or below 50 kW and commercial local space heaters with a nominal heat output equal or below 70 kW. It is worth noticing that the draft energy labelling regulation covers only heaters up to 50 kW, and it does not use definitions domestic and commercial.

Ventilation products – progress after a long silence?

Also for ventilation units of different sizes – small ones as one part of ENER Lot 10 and large ones within ENTR Lot 6, Consultation Forum was held in November 2012. The list of planned Regulatory Committee meetings indicates that also for ventilation units a meeting is planned for December 2013. This would mean that a proposal for ecodesign and/or labelling regulation could be sent to Member States in early autumn.

Publications

No.18: Legionellosis Prevention in Building water in HVAC Systems: A Practical Guide for Design, Operation and Maintenance to Minimize the Risk

Sergio LA MURA (ed.), Cesare Maria JOPPOLO (ed.), Luca Alberto PITERA (ed.), Jean Pierre ANGERMANN, Mark IZARD

This Guidebook is a practical guide for design, operation and maintenance to minimize the risk of legionellosis  in building water and HVAC systmes. It is devided into several themes such as: Air conditioning of the air (by water – humidification), Production of hot water for washing (fundamentally but not only hot water for washing) and Evaporative cooling tower.

No.19: Mixing Ventilation - Guidebook on mixing air distribution design

Dirk Müller (Ed.), Claudia Kandzia, Risto Kosonen, Arsen Krikor Melikov, Peter Vilhelm Nielsen

In this guidebook most of the known and used in practice methods for achieving mixing air distribution are discussed. Mixing ventilation has been applied to many different spaces providing fresh air and thermal comfort to the occupants. Today, a design engineer can choose from large selection of air diffusers and exhaust openings.

No.20: Advanced system design and operation of GEOTABS buildings

Franziska Bockelmann, Stefan Plesser, Hanna Soldaty

This guidebook provides comprehensive information on GEOTABS systems. It is intended to support building owners, architects and engineers in an early design stage showing how GEOTABS can be integrated into their building concepts. It also gives many helpful advices from experienced engineers that have designed, built and run GEOTABS systems.  

Report No 4: REHVA nZEB technical definition and system boundaries for nearly zero energy buildings

Jarek Kurnitski (Ed.), Francis Allard, Derrick Braham, Dick van Dijk, Christian Feldmann, Jacquelyn Fox, Jonas Gräslund, Per Heiselberg, Frank Hovorka, Risto Kosonen, Jean Lebrun, Zoltán Magyar, Livio Mazzarella, Ivo Martinac, Vojislav Novakovic, Jorma Railio, Olli Seppänen, Igor Sartori, Johann Zirngibl, Michael Schmidt, Maija Virta, Karsten Voss, Åsa Wahlström

In this REHVA Report in cooperation with CEN, technical definitions and energy calculation principles for nearly zero energy buildings required in the implementation of the Energy performance of buildings directive recast are presented. This 2013 revision replaces 2011 version. These technical definitions and specifications were prepared in the level of detail to be suitable for the implementation in national building codes.

All the REHVA publications are available in PDF and hard copies. To order, please visit the Guidebooks Shop at www.rehva.eu. or contact REHVA Office by phone 032.2.5141171 or by fax 32.2.5129062.

Upcoming HVAC Events

Aqua-Therm Almaty
3 – 6 September 2013, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Welcome to the 5th Kazakhstan Anniversary International Exhibition for Heating, Ventilation Air-Conditioning, Water Supply, Sanitary, Environmental Technology and Swimming Pool. Please visit the exhibition website. 

34th AIVC- 3rdTightVent- 2nd Cool Roofs’ - 1st venticool joint conference on Energy conservation technologies for mitigation and adaptation in the built environment: the role of ventilation strategies and smart materials.
25-26 September 2013, Athens, Greece

For more information and registration please visit the event website.

CLIMAMED - Mediterranean Congress of Air Conditioning
3-4 October 2013, Istanbul, Turkey
For more information, please visit the website. 

IAQ 2013 Conference
15-18 October 2013, Vancouver, Canada
More information

Aqua-Therm Baku
23 – 26 October 2013, Baku, Kazakhstan
Aqua-Therm Baku is becoming more and more popular amongst HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) professionals. More information

Aqua Therm Moscow
4-7 February 2013, Moscow, Russia
The leading event in Russia in the industry of heating, water supply, sanitary technologies, air-conditioning, ventilation and the equipment for pools, saunas and spa. Website

49th AiCARR international conference
Historic and Existing Buildings Conference: designing the retrofit
26-28 February 2014, Rome, Italy

Aqua-Therm Prague
4 - 7 March 2014, Prague, Czech Republic
20th International trade fair The International trade fair for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, measuring, regulation, sanitary and environmental technology
Website

Website

Indoor air 2014
July 7-12, Hong KongPlease feel free to contact the organiser at info@indoorair2014.org for information and suggestions or visit the conference website at www.indoorair2014.org.

For more HVAC events, please check the REHVA Events Calendar on www.rehva.eu and also www.buildup.eu.

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