Modelling technical and economical benefits of three low energy techniques applied to a commercial office building

This paper reports a modelling study on quantitative assessment of economical benefits of three low energy solutions that could be easily applied to a large number of office buildings in the delta area of Yangtze River, where climate is characterised as hot summer and cold winter. The solutions include solar shading plus fabric insulation, sufficiently use of natural ventilation, and combination of these two. Using a real office building in Shanghai, the centre of the Delta area, a dynamic thermal model was developed to calculate the annual energy demands when each of the three solutions was applied. Then a basic full life cycle model was built and the energy demands were converted into running cost to assess the payback when the three energy saving solutions were combined.