NEED4B Site Borås & Varberg

The NEED4B demonstration site in Sweden features two buildings, which represent pre-fabricated low-energy wooden framed villas of between 140 and 200 m2. The houses were manufactured beforehand and then assembled at the selected locations. One building was assembled in a new attractive residential area near Varberg and used as display house for a time. The second building of the same kind was assembled at a research facility in Borås and used as a full-scale test lab for energy-efficient technologies and construction details, with artificial user-behaviour loads. Different HVAC equipment performance was tested and evaluated, as well as the impact of different user-behaviours and construction details. The building was used in parallel for smart grid research and as a showcase for journalists and visitors.

The strength of their construction aimed to show how the future would deal with the issue of energy in private homes and strive for zero-energy buildings. The buildings also went beyond the issue of energy waste management and water management adapted to the region. Renewable energy sources were the focus in the construction of these buildings.

Pre-fabricated villas are a mass-market product. The house model is not a prototype, but a real solution to become part of the standard catalogue. It was constructed and equipped with energy solutions that work in various climates and countries from Helsinki to Strasbourg, including the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries with a similar climate.