energy saving

Cooling loads in office buildings with large glazing facades are increase due to solar radiation penetrating the windows and over-heating the rooms. Moreover solar radiation provides natural lighting in the rooms, which might be higher than expected in the summer months and causes glare problems. In order to balance optimally between the reduction of cooling loads and natural lighting a controller can be applied to select the best combination between the position of blinds and whether the artificial lights will operate or not. 

Air quality in the office room areas, as well as their energy demands for heating and cooling are directly depended on the ventilation levels in those rooms. Specifically, high internal air quality requires high levels of ventilation and therefore high energy demands. On the other hand, high energy savings can be accomplished by full building impermeability, which means low to none ventilation and at the same time low air quality.

Urban gardens are a means of greening and are created by a local community. As regards any urban environment, urban greening helps cooling the air and provides shading, thus reducing building energy consumption and improving the outdoor conditions during the summer. In more detail, vegetation is a way to deal with the phenomenon of energy poverty in which many people cannot meet their basic energy needs as well as the phenomenon of urban heat island. This paper deals with the ways in which vegetation affects the improvement of microclimatic change, mainly through evapotranspiration.

As environmental issues are rapidly gaining more and more interest globally, various measures and standards are being set to minimize the use of energy in the architecture field, which consists about a fourth of the total use of energy. Korea, like other developed countries, is also aiming to make zero-energy buildings mandatory(by 2025) implementing various measures such as energy efficiency rating system and energy performance certification systems to gradually minimize energy consumption in buildings. 

Maintaining an IAQ with fresh in school building is very important because the good IAQ can keep the student in health and improve the academic performance. Since school buildings are very dense and require a lot of fresh air, the need for ventilation has become obvious. While opening a window does provide fresh air, which is undesirable for the indoor climate and for energy efficiency under severe outdoor condition. ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilation) technology offers an optimal solution: fresh air, better climate control and energy efficiency.

Stratum ventilation has been proposed to cope for elevated indoor temperature recommended by governments in East Asia. TRNSYS is used for computation of the space cooling load and system energy consumption. A typical Hong Kong office is investigated. Compared with mixing ventilation and displacement ventilation, stratum ventilation derives its energy saving potential largely from the following two factors: a reduced ventilation load and increased coefficients of performance (COP) for chillers.

In Mediterranean regions, characterized by a hot and humid climate during summer, the exposure of facades and the position of opening windows are important parameters to enhance passive cooling in the building using buoyancy-driven airflow. An example is the double skin façade which is directly exposed to solar radiation.

Mixing and displacement ventilation are common systems in commercial buildings, while mixing ventilation is used in residential buildings. Displacement ventilation provides fresh air to the occupied zone in a more efficient way than mixing ventilation but it is important to know how well it works with a floor system for heating or cooling. Can, for example, a floor heating system warm up the supply air too fast and destroy the displacement effect?

Outlines a study carried out in order to assess the impact of lighting energy savings on global energy consumption for office buildings. It is the result of combining both daylighting and thermal aspects in an integrated approach, and the present article concentrates on the simulation results. A modelling exercise was carried out for several facade configurations, for the four main orientations and three combinations of internal wall reflection coefficients. To perform the simulations, a daylighting simulation tool (ADELINE) was coupled with a dynamic thermal simulation software (TRNSYS).