This site is designed to describe the activities of the Task 23 - team and the background of this research project. Task 23 is one of the international Research Projects of the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme. The main objective of the Task is to ensure the most appropriate use of solar energy in each specific building project for the purpose of optimizing the use of solar energy and also of promoting more use of solar energyin the building sector. In addition, the objective of the Task is to ensure that the buildings promote sustainable development.

To achieve a substantial reduction in total energy use in these buildings it is essential to use combinations of several technologies, such as:

• energy conservation
• daylighting
• active and passive solar
• phototvoltaics

To significantly reduce the total energy use in large buildings, it is necessary to use several technologies, such as energy conservation, daylighting, passive solar, active solar and photovoltaics, in combination. The deigners of these buildings therefore need to find the optimum combinations of technologies for each specific case. This requires an integrated design approach, where the different low energy and solar technologies to be used are considered integral parts of the world.

Task 23 will enable the designers to realize such integrated design processes and to carry out the necessary optimization excercises, thereby ensuring the most appropriate use of solar energy in each building project. This will be done by including criteria such as general resource use and local and global environmental impact in the analysis fcilitated.

The work in the Task focuses primarily on commercial and institutional buildings, as these types of buildings all need more than one type of system. In particular, office buildings and educational buildings are addressed. The primary results of the work will be guidelines, methods and tools for use by building designers in the early stages of design. The Task also includes demonstration buildings, as such buildings both provide an opportunity to test the design tools developed and as they provide an effective way of demonstrating the integration of solar technologies in real buildings.

The results of the task work, especially the IPP-Navigator and its manual, are available on the iea-shc website. To take a shortcut to the download files, please use the following link: