Heating, cooling and domestic hot water in buildings have high energy demands and they are associated with direct and indirect environmental problems through pollutant emissions. A dramatic increase of the installed air conditioning systems in buildings is observed during the last years. The dominant practice is that air conditioning applications rely exclusively on electrical energy while the exploitation of solar energy is mainly for domestic hot water, with few applications on space heating and very limited on space cooling.
While most existing EU National regulations only prescribe requirements for reducing heating needs, the new EU Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD) requires them to be updated to also account for cooling needs. In particular, the EPBD stresses the need to effectively promote the use of passive cooling measures.
A desiccant cooling unit powered by 14.8 m2 of solar liquid collectors is implemented in a training room in Chambery in Eastern France. The system uses a Lithium Chloride sorption wheel and is optimized to work without an auxiliary heat regeneration source. Several parameters are studied in order to decrease primary energy consumption and increase system performance. The models are implemented in an object-oriented simulation environment called SPARK which allows system coupling with building models.
Research studies of thermal comfort in buildings aim mostly at maintaining air temperature, especially during summer period, within the acceptable comfort conditions and with the minimum energy consumption. The contribution of wind is known to be an important parameter for natural ventilation and passive cooling of buildings. In the present work the correlation between the variation of wind and air temperature is studied for two different meteorological stations in major Athens area, where the heat island effect exists.
Raising the solar reflectance of a roof from a typical value of 0.1–0.2 to an achievable 0.6 can reduce cooling-energy use in buildings by more than 20%. Cool roofs also reduce ambient outside air temperature, thus further decreasing the need for air cond
This paper deals with the applicability of passive and low energy cooling technologies in the Czech Republic. The work includes climate analysis as well as buildings and systems analysis in order to estimate the potential of passive and low energy cooling technologies. The latter is based on case studies, which include both building simulation and monitoring. The role of computer simulation in low energy building design and optimization is briefly discussed.
A model has been proposed for evaluating the discharge coefficient and flow angle at an inflow opening for cross-ventilation. This model is based on the fact that the cross-ventilation flow structure in the vicinity of an inflow opening creates dynamic similarity under the condition that the ratio of cross-ventilation driving pressure to dynamic pressure of cross flow at the opening is consistent. It was confirmed from a wind tunnel experiment that the proposed model can be applied almost regardless of wind direction and opening position.
The field of thermal comfort surveys has recently expanded to other areas such as vehic- les and external spaces. An area that has not been examined is boats. This research will attempt to approach thermal comfort conditions in boats and establish a background for thermal comfort surveys in boats generally. The first part took place during the summer months of the year 2003 in Greece under real conditions. Several boats took part and also people with different characteristics such as age, sex and weight answered the questionnaires.
In built environment assured access to sun is important because of the quality of life and because of the energy benefits. We can find a great number of historical precedents of respecting this issue. In Slovenia traditional settlements of the Karst are a model example. In this paper we investigated the Karst settlement of Kobjeglava. We studied the disposition of buildings with respect to cooling. We used the solar volume method for assessing the urban plan and estimating the solar access.
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