Wood stoves are widely used in dwellings for space heating, however transient heat output and relatively large heat emission might cause problems with over-heating in new well-insulated buildings. This paper introduces a simplified power sizing method for the building integration of wood stoves which was compared to dynamic building performance simulations. The analysis showed that on average the simplified method predicted the temperature increase in the living room similarly to dynamic simulations. However, in some cases the difference was up to 60%, which is significant when carried forward to selecting the optimal stove heat capacity. Precise use of the simplified power sizing method requires accurate knowledge of the building structures and effective thermal capacity of the room with the wood stove. Typically, this kind of knowledge is unavailable when selecting a wood stove and the method needs to be developed further. These investigations confirmed that more knowledge of the occupant behaviour and preference on thermal comfort is needed.

Wood stoves are widely used in Nordic countries. They offer a good opportunity to use biomass for space-heating and to reduce the peak power of all-electric buildings. However, wood stoves are highly concentrated heat sources with limited control compared to other typical heat emission systems, which makes the assessment of their impact challenging. This study introduces a simulation-based parametric study of a detached house equipped with a wood stove located in Oslo, Norway. The respective impact of different building parameters and stove nominal powers on the building performance is illustrated. The analysis shows that the annual total space-heating needs (i.e. the sum of the base load, modelled as ideal heaters representing the electrical radiators, the stove and the heating of the ventilation supply air) increased significantly due to the higher average indoor temperature. The resulting heat emission efficiency of the stove ranged between 66% and 90%. However, the stoves covered between 28% and 62% of the total space-heating needs. When using the stove, the maximum hourly-averaged power for the electrical radiators decreased between 5 W/m2 and 31 W/m2 during the peak hours of the electricity grid. The building thermal mass, insulation level, as well as the combination of internal door position with the bedroom temperature setpoint, had a significant impact on the calculated values. Finally, the study revealed that the occupant behaviour modelling should be improved to better capture the wood stove impact on the energy performance using building simulations.