Energy Consumption Simulation for Residential Buildings With Shading Devices in Different Regions

Abstract

With the development of energy saving, it is needed to calculate the energy consumption of the residential building, particularly accurate dynamic energy consumption. Fixed shading devices are wildly used to save building energy because they prevent undesirable heat coming through the windows during the “overheated period”, just as in summer, which can ameliorate the indoor environments and reduce the energy consumption of air-conditioning in summer. But they will also prevent solar energy which can be used in winter to enter windows. So it is very important to be able to determine the optimal shading devices of windows. The overhangs and vertical-shading devices are representative to study the different energy performance in summer and winter, in an actual dwell house. On the other hand, fixed shading devices can weaken the effect of daylighting, so we would take both the total energy consumption and rooms’ daylighting into account. In this study, we choose several typical dwelling houses in different cities located in north, south, west, east and central region of China respectively. We calculated energy consumption of those models by using Energyplus program, and compared the shading performance of horizontal and vertical shading devices, then optimal configuration dimensions of horizontal shading devices are recommended on the basis of different requirements for solar heat gains in winter and in summer for those typical dwelling houses.