Abstract
The aim of the project detailed in this article was the development of an energy model for verifying Mexican energy standard compliance using the energy simulation engine EnergyPlus through Open Studio SGSAVE software. We aimed to improve the tool’s ability to increase the comfort of social housing through the implementation of the standard in a practical digital tool. The project followed a four-stage methodology. The first stage was the development of climatic zoning for the country. The second stage involved the research and classification of the main traditional construction systems. The third stage was extensive research on the actual state of Mexican energy verification and its legal framework. The standard studied was NOM-020-ENER-2011. The final stage was testing the verification method by introducing the energy Mexican rule into the proposed software with the zoning and construction systems catalogue. A base model of a social housing type was developed in the software. Then, this model was improved to respond to each representative climate zone. Both models were simulated and we verified if they met the requirements. The results were contrasted for determining if there were energy savings. As a conclusion, we found that the actual energy standard of Mexico needs to be changed and we suggest the implementation of the energy simulation engine Energy Plus for creating more complete reports. This will help with the practical improvements in social housing conditions.
Highlights
The low thermal comfort in social housing is becoming a severe cause of house abandonment in Mexico
Compared with the –151% of the base model, the 19–20% improvement with the the updated model is significant. These results only show the heat gains and loses for the thermal envelope as requested by the Mexican energy standard
The first aim was the creation of new climatic zoning for Mexico for delimiting the winter and summer severity for each capital city state
Summary
The low thermal comfort in social housing is becoming a severe cause of house abandonment in Mexico. The causes are diverse, like non-payment, not enough public services, and houses that did not meet the minimum conditions of comfort” [1]. This social housing problem is the result of the lack of a comfort model, with studies only focusing on construction quality and cost. To address the energy demands and the comfort needs for interior spaces, the European standards provide reference values for ensuring the optimal habitat conditions of buildings. Because not all the social housing owners have enough economical sources for implementing a specialized design and optimization for their particular project, it is crucial that the authorities establish a guide for building based on proper studies and customized reference values
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