An Analysis of City Gas Consumption According to the Building Orientation of Apartment Buildings- Focused on a Case in Ulsan -

Abstract

Effective energy management of buildings is currently necessary because of accelerated global climate change and impending resource crises. In particular, in the case of South Korea, city gas consumption makes up 11.8% of the total energy; 39.6% of this energy is used residentially. Therefore, in order to reduce city gas consumption, more effective residential use is needed. To address this issue, the objective of this study is to analyze the differences in city gas consumption according to the building orientation in apartment buildings; in South Korea, these types of buildings are almost exclusively residential. To achieve this objective, an apartment complex with over 1,000 households was selected. Then, the real city gas usage data in households of either 59.97m2 or 84.96m2 were collected. Next, according to the building orientation (i.e., whether the household is south-east or south-west facing), the data were analyzed statistically. As a result, in the 59.97m2 and 84.96m2 households, the total city gas used in 2012 was 9.2% and 8.4% greater, respectively, in south-west facing apartments compared with households facing south-east. These results were proven to be statistically significant using the analysis of variance (ANOVA). In the future, the findings of this study can be used to develop prediction models for city gas consumption in apartment buildings.