Energy saving potential of a thermoelectric active insulation panel applied to existing apartment building

The building sector is one of the major industrial sectors worldwide in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Accordingly, many countries have progressively tightened building performance standards with the aim of reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in buildings. However, existing buildings constructed before the introduction of strengthened insulation requirements exhibit low envelope insulation performance and consequently high energy consumption. Among various retrofit strategies, interior insulation using conventional insulation materials is widely known as a representative and easy-to-apply method. Nevertheless, such passive insulation retrofits inevitably reduce the usable indoor floor area. To overcome these limitations of conventional insulation, this study proposes a compact active technology termed a Thermoelectric active insulation panel. The system suppresses heat transfer through exterior walls by utilizing the Peltier effect of thermoelectric modules, which generates a temperature difference between the two sides of the module when an electric current is applied. In this study, the energy-saving potential of the Thermoelectric active insulation panel is quantitatively evaluated by comparing and analyzing the energy performance of a residential apartment unit with a floor area of 86 m2 before and after system application. Simulation results show that the heating load and cooling load are reduced by 28% and 7.2%, respectively. When the power consumption of the panels is included, the annual primary energy use decreases by 16%. These results indicate that the proposed system effectively suppresses heat transfer through exterior walls and is effective in improving the energy performance of existing residential buildings.