Economic Assessment of L-Shaped Minilouvers for Reducing Cooling Energy and Improving Daylight Condition in Offices: A Simulation Study in Jakarta

Alexander Rani Suryandono,Agus Hariyadi,Hiroatsu Fukuda

doi:10.3390/su13074021

Alexander Rani Suryandono, Agus Hariyadi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13074021

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Abstract

Energy consumption is a major sustainability issue. One of the largest portions of energy consumption in buildings comes from cooling. This paper proposes the use of L-shaped minilouvers as shading, which both improve useful daylight illuminance (UDI) and reduce cooling-energy consumption. Jakarta, Indonesia was chosen as the study location since it has driving factors for higher cooling energy, ranging from those of demographic to the environment. An open office was chosen for simulation in Rhinoceros 3D with the Grasshopper, LadyBug, and Honeybee plug-ins, which utilize the EnergyPlus engine. Following the UDI and cooling-energy simulations, surveys were conducted to gather the information of the price of materials for shading and electricity. Savings from cooling energy were compared with the cost of shading application to obtain the simple payback periods. The best shading was provided by L-shaped minilouvers, which can achieve a simple payback period of 0.86 years, reducing cooling-energy consumption by around 18% while improving around 16.78 UDI in comparison with the base case with the average of all the orientations. All simulated L-shaped minilouvers also performed better than the overhang did, which is a more common form of shading in the simulated location.

Highlights

Considering previous studies and methodologies related to the environmental aspects, such as the improvement of daylight condition and the reduction in cooling energy, while examining the economic point of view, such as the payback period, this study proposes the use of a novel design for the L-shaped minilouvers for sun-shading devices
The weather data that were used for the simulation in this paper showed that the western façade suffered the highest total solar radiation of 934.79 kWh/m2
In the average of all orientations, direct solar radiation was lower than diffused solar radiation was by 94.18 kWh/m2. This means that a shading device should be designed to block both direct and diffuse solar radiation

Summary

Introduction

Sustainability is one of the main issues in buildings, especially regarding the use of energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) noted that the final energy use in buildings and appliances from the year 2000 to 2017 increased by 21% [1] The consumption of cooling energy increased from 3.6 EJ in 2000 to 7 EJ in 2017. According to the IEA, there are five factors that drive the cooling-energy consumption into significantly growing [2]. Other than using cooling all year round, the warmer area and high humidity requires higher energy to reduce the temperature in comparison with those in colder regions. Both cooling-degree days and peak temperature are increasing. Heavier materials can act as thermal mass that balance the temperature, which positively contribute to less cooling energy. Changes in building layouts, such as removing porches and roof overhangs, and less passive designs

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