User
BV² and BV²Arch are tools used to determine a building's energy usage based on choices made regarding the building itself and its installation systems. These tools are deliberately adapted to work in practical situations during the construction and management process.
New Building
BV²Arch is the tool for architects/building consultants and clients/property owners. It is designed to be used in the early stages of a building's creation before technical systems are chosen. The focus here is on the building's design and the effects that the building's geometric shape, orientation, facade construction, choice of window type and facade design, and sun shading have on the building's heat surplus and heat deficit.
BV² is the tool that follows after BV²Arch. Files created in BV²Arch can naturally be read into BV² and further processed. This is where we talk about the system stage and the design stage, where the building is equipped with technical systems for heating, cooling, and ventilating the building. In these stages, installation consultants and designing installation contractors work to select and size these systems. BV² can then help them choose technical systems that work together with the building so that energy usage is minimized while maintaining climate requirements and profitability. For architects/building consultants who want to delve further into issues related to building energy usage, BV² is, of course, to be recommended.
Existing Building
In an existing building, there are usually limited opportunities to influence the building's geometric shape, orientation, basic facade construction, and facade design. Here, BV² is the natural choice. Although there are certainly all possibilities to influence the basic appearance of the building even in BV², it is usually questions about renovation or replacement of windows, additional insulation, sun shading, changed operations, and supplementation or modification of technical systems/control (heating, cooling, ventilation) that are relevant to analyze and obtain a good basis for decision-making.
These issues mainly occupy property owners, builders, building consultants, installation consultants, installation contractors, energy advisors, and so-called independent experts, who will work with energy declarations of buildings. All of these greatly benefit from BV² when an existing building is to be made more energy-efficient.
Education
With its user-friendly design and extensive graphical result presentation, BV² is very suitable for educational contexts. Using a simple yet reliable tool like BV² to experiment and investigate how energy usage (heating, cooling, and electricity) is affected by different designs and measures in a building with its installations gives students a better understanding of building energy usage. It is these students who will reduce energy usage in buildings by 20 – 50% in the next 20 – 50 years!
BV² is already used today in higher education at the university level at institutions such as Chalmers University of Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karlstad University, Örebro University, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
If you want to know more about BV², you are welcome to contact us.
