Abstract
Improving the energy efficiency of buildings is among the most urgent social development tasks due to the scale of energy consumption in this industry. At the same time, it is essential to meet high requirements for indoor environmental quality and thermal comfort. The issue of overheating is most often analysed in summer but it also occurs in transition seasons, when the cooling systems do not operate. The paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of external mobile shading elements on the microclimate of rooms with large glazed areas in the transition season. Passive solutions, such as shading elements, which limit the increase of indoor temperature, do not always allow the acquisition and maintenance of comfortable solutions for the duration of the season, as demonstrated by the authors. Temporary cooling of the rooms may be necessary to maintain comfortable conditions for the users, or other solutions should be devised to improve comfort (e.g., reduction of clothing insulation characteristics). The novelty of the study consists in the analysis of comfort in a “nearly zero energy consumption” building (NZEB) during a period not analyzed by other scientists. This is a transition period during which heating/cooling systems do not operate. The research task set by the authors involved the assessment of the possibility to reduce office space overheating in the transition season (spring) by using external shading equipment in rooms with large glazed areas. An additional research task aimed at checking the extent to which user behaviour, such as reduction in clothing insulation characteristics, can improve comfort in overheated rooms. The results of the tests reveal that the difference in the ambient air temperature between a room with external venetian blinds and an identical room with no venetian blinds in the transition season, i.e., from 27 March to 6 April 2017, ranged from 12.3 to 2.1 °C. The use of a shading system (external venetian blinds positioned at an angle of 45°) reduced the number of discomfort hours by 92% (during working hours) compared to the room without external venetian blinds. A reduction in the thermal insulation of the clothes worn by people working in the room with no venetian blinds helped to reduce the number of discomfort hours by 31%.
Highlights
The policy of the European Union obliges member states to introduce a new standard of nearly zero energy buildings [1,2]
Fanger proposed that the subjective thermal comfort sensation of the users of rooms should be identified with predicted mean votevote (PMV)
The system was not expected to work during the transition period
Summary
The policy of the European Union obliges member states to introduce a new standard of nearly zero energy buildings [1,2]. Passive buildings have become more popular in Europe [4,5] Both standards of buildings are characterised by very low energy demand. Designing such buildings requires wide knowledge of the Energies 2020, 13, 81; doi:10.3390/en13010081 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies. It seems necessary to estimate thermal comfort conditions at each work station in the period of time when overheating occurs in the building. Proposals for system (need for cooling), architectural and building solutions aimed at the reduction of overheating should result from such analyses. The need to reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling purposes, which has been increasing recently, encourages designers and researchers to carry out more exact analyses for ensuring thermal comfort. Many researchers include thermal comfort into indoor environment quality models, taking into account acoustic and lighting comfort and proposing modifications [16,17,18,19]
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