Energy and comfort performance of natural ventilation system office buildings in China

This paper presents an analysis of energy and comfort performance of typical office buildings for summer cooling in five climate zones in China using the natural ventilation assessment tool, which is developed based on the integrated thermal and airflow model. Harbin, Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming and Guangzhou are selected as the five representative cities for Very Cold, Cold, Hot Summer and Cold Winter, Mild and Hot Summer and Warm Winter zones respectively. The cooling energy consumption with air conditioning system is compared to that with natural ventilation system. The simulation results show that for daytime air-conditioning system in conjunction with night ventilation can reduce cooling energy significantly for each zone. Part time air-conditioning operation can reduce cooling energy in Very Cold and Mild zones significantly but not in Hot summer zones such as Guangzhou and Shanghai. In natural ventilation cooling system design, climatic factor must be considered because it is a very important factor, which influences the effectiveness of natural ventilation and cooling energy consumption.