Assessing the Impact of Urban Heat Island Effect on Building Cooling Load based on the Local Climate Zone Scheme

Abstract

The impact of urban heat island on building cooling load is assessed based upon the Local Climate Zone (LCZ) scheme. The field observed data from the nine LCZ sites in Nanjing, China, for the period from 21 July to 30 September 2016 were used to generate new EnergyPlus Weather (EPW) files. Then the cooling loads of a typical office building and apartment building were simulated with EnergyPlus. The heat island features of the LCZs and their impacts on building cooling load were analyzed. For the whole studied period, the cooling load increases for the office building and the apartment building range between 4.0%–7.1% and 11.2%–25.2%, respectively. For the night time (19:00–06:00) of the 22 identified days with the weather condition of light winds and clear skies, the cooling load increases of the apartment building range from 12.8% to 52.5%.