building energy consumption

Building energy simulation is essential for most architectural design projects. Many models have been developed to predict the indoor air temperature and relative humidity as well as the building’s heating and cooling loads. However, in most building energy analysis the calculation of heat conduction through walls usually neglects the transport and storage of moisture in porous building materials, and the interaction between hygrothermal transfer and airflow inside the building.

As well known, Hourly weather data should be available before running building energy consumption simulation.A large number of Chinese locations have only six-hourly or daily measured weather data, because observed data are not easily obtained or not digitalized. Measured hourly, sixhourly and daily weather data for four cities in China, namely Xi’an, Kunming, Hangzhou and Shantou were gathered and analyzed. Three climatic variables, namely dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure, were investigated.

Natural ventilation is an effective method for energy conservation while potentially improving indoor air quality. Furthermore, a window has a significant impact on energy consumption. The purpose of this study is to reduce building energy use by changing ventilation rates and window areas. We analyzed the energy consumption and CO2 emissions according to ventilation rates and window areas through using a computer program, HEED 3.0. The reference model had two windows of 1.2m×1.5m, and assumed there was no ventilation except for the minimum ventilation rate of 0.35 ACH.