Abstract
Energy efficiency is one of the most important topics worldwide, nevertheless, each region has its own specifics, which have to be considered. This is especially important for online tools that deliver comprehensive information on energy efficiency and renewable energy for average consumer as well as for municipalities and governments. These tools are essential for energy retrofit of existing building for energy saving as well as designing of new energy-efficient buildings and also for designing and sizing renewable energy technologies such as solar home system. A dynamic interactive building energy design software tool has been developed especially tailored taking care about main features required for Sub-Saharan African context, under a joint agreement (research project) between Politecnico di Milano and UN-Habitat. In this chapter, the results of testing of the software tool for building geometry have been presented.
Highlights
Majority of modern buildings in Sub-Saharan Africa are replicas of buildings designed for the western world and do not take into consideration the differences in climate
Because of its relevance in warm environments (African context), a special effort was dedicated to developing interfaces to model natural ventilation effects: The EnergyPlus airflow network mass transfer model included in BESTenergy enables users to calculate at each time step the actual ventilation flow taking into account the openings’ geometry, their relative positions and opening time intervals
To verify building geometry modeled by BESTenergy, the research team selected the design of a three-story hypothetical office building (Fig. 5) that features non-trivial geometry configuration and has been previously repetitively used in the testing of other new simulation tools and utilities
Summary
Energy used in commercial and residential buildings accounts for a significant percentage of the total national energy consumption. Energy efficiency is one of the most important topics worldwide, each region has its own specifics, which have to be considered This is especially important for online tools that deliver comprehensive information on energy efficiency and renewable energy for average consumer as well as for municipalities and governments. These tools are essential for energy retrofit of existing building for energy saving as well as designing of new energy-efficient buildings and for designing and sizing renewable energy technologies such as solar home system. Addressing these issues, the UN-Habitat programme “Promoting Urban Energy for climate change in developing countries” has the objective to mainstream energy efficiency and renewable energy measures in the delivery of sustainable and friendly built environment
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