English

To minimize environmental impact and CO2 production associated with air-conditioning system operation, it is reasonable to evaluate the prospects of a clean energy source. Solar energy can drive an absorption chiller in order to satisfy the cooling needs of buildings. The objective of this work is to build a simulation environment that can evaluate accurately the energy consumption of an air conditioning system including a solar driven absorption chiller.

Power reliability is one of the biggest concerns for people living off-grid. Current practice in off-grid solar house tends to either oversize solar power system or oversize the backup generator to ensure available electricity at all times, which often leads to a high system capital cost. Research has shown that  right-sizing is essential to achieve a more efficient system with reduced energy consumption. Sound, responsible system sizing can only happen when liability issues become part of the design methodology, i.e.

As part of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD) energy efficiency in building project, the authors have been involved in modelling various technology options for different building market segments to reach net-zero energy goal. This paper describes the modelling of single-family residence in US southeast as a case-in-point to illustrate the most common strategies that are considered during net-zero energy building (NZEB) design stage, ease of modelling these strategies using different tools, and issues of input/output quality control.

This paper describes the development, application and analysis of an interactive user-friendly Code for Sustainable Homes based toolkit called Sustainability  appraisal Toolkit (SAT) commissioned by a leading UK social housing provider. The SAT software runs on MS Excel and is used to evaluate the technical and economical feasibility of achieving Code levels 4, 5 and 6 for a representative sample of new-build dwellings in the UK for different scales of development (single-home, 25-home and 250-home development).

This paper uses two case studies to illustrate the process of building design with due regard to sustainable construction and how the recent changes in legislations affect the way buildings are designed in the UK. Two real case studies cover housing and commercial office sectors. These case studies indicate that a performance based design approach exploiting building simulation offers a building with an improved indoor comfort, lower carbon emissions and added value to the client. Finally, this paper offers some insight into future developments of the UK legislations.

Combined heat, air, moisture and pollutant simulations (CHAMPS) at the building system level are essential for improving energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality. This paper discusses the technical challenges and possible solutions to the problem of coupling an envelope model (CHAMSBES) with a multizone/network model for inter-zonal air and pollutant transport. A representative multizone solver was written, which solves the coupled heat, air, moisture and pollutant transport equations.

Modelling and simulation of energy consumption in Information Technology (IT) building on the Rockhampton campus of Central Queensland University, Australia is presented. Design Builder, commercially available software, was used for the prediction of energy consumption. All the possible sources and uses of energy in building were accounted in the modelling and simulation. The operation of the Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system and the lighting energy consumption of the whole building has been studied in detailed.

This paper presents a model-based supervisory control strategy for online control of building central cooling water systems to enhance their energy efficiency. Simplified chiller and cooling tower models are developed and used to predict the system energy performance, environment quality as well as the system response to the changes of control settings. A novel and simple optimization technique, named as PMES method, is developed and used to seek the optimal control settings under the given working conditions.

The present paper proposes an optimal operational strategy of an actual HVAC system with a seasonal underground thermal storage system using simulation. The simulation is a powerful tool for the system because it is difficult to try various operational methods experimentally in the actual system due to the long heat transfer time in the underground.

A rational method to estimate the energy baseline of a building is indispensable in performing such as retro commissioning, on going commissioning and ESCO (Energy Service Company) projects. Usually a statistical regression method is used to estimate a baseline. But the limitation of this method is that it cannot evaluate the effect of changes in operational conditions such as HVAC system and occupancy schedule, room temperatures, amount of fresh air intake in HVAC systems, weather conditions, etc. by which energy use is affected.