CEPHEUS
CEPHEUS is an acronym from C ost E fficient P assive H ouses as E uropean S tandards (English, German, low-cost passive houses as European standards ). This project was funded in the 5th framework program of the EU and carried out jointly by Germany , France , Austria , Sweden and Switzerland as partners (project no. BU / 0127/97). The aim of the project was to demonstrate in practice in a total of 14 construction projects with a total of more than 200 residential units at different locations that the passive house standard enables heating energy savings of more than a factor of 4.
All planned construction projects were actually implemented. A Europe-wide measurement project was carried out and evaluated on a total of 113 residential units. This was used to check whether the energy consumption values actually met the objective. The result was an average annual heating consumption of 17 kWh / (m²), a value that is 73% below the consumption of average new buildings according to the national building regulations. The CEPHEUS project has thus successfully demonstrated how great the potential for increasing energy efficiency is in Europe and that the passive house concept is reliably capable of tapping this potential.
CEPHEUS has not only tested new technologies for efficient heat saving, but has also gained knowledge of the effectiveness of various measures. Constructions free of thermal bridges were used throughout - in timber construction as well as in solid construction. Reproducible airtightness parameters n 50 between 0.3 and 0.6 h −1 were achieved. In addition, highly efficient devices for heat recovery were used with a heat recovery rate between 79% and 95%. One of the CEPHEUS settlements, the passive house settlement in Hanover Kronsberg, was supplemented by a wind converter close to the settlement to make it a climate-neutral settlement.
In Austria, CEPHEUS marked the start of a development that has meanwhile been supported by all federal states, which defines the passive house as the target value for future new buildings. In the meantime, more than 1000 passive houses have been built in Austria alone.
The results of CEPHEUS are comprehensively documented and published. Some CEPHEUS documents are available on the Internet.