Energy Saving Effort for Residential Buildings in the Hot and Humid Climate: A Review on Ventilation Performance Requirements

Abstract

Most Southeast Asian countries have been facing a rapid growth of urbanizations. This greatly affects the increasing demands of housings as well as energy consumption in the building sector, particularly due to the space cooling to achieve indoor thermal comfort. On the other hand, the hybrid cooling strategy has shown a promising potential in energy saving through the combination of mechanical and natural ventilation. Nevertheless, such strategy has not been optimally implemented in the current residential buildings. This study carried out a review on energy-saving related standards and guidelines in several Southeast Asian countries, especially on the requirements for ventilation performance. In addition, this study also carried out Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation to investigate the ventilation performance of the existing apartment in Indonesia. In general, most of the countries’ existing standards have not properly accommodated the energy-saving potential through natural ventilation. Moreover, the simulation results show that the indoor air speed and air change rate in the existing apartment are still below the required standards, mostly due to a lack of ventilation strategies in the building design: e.g., selection of opening configuration and window type. Hence, in order to optimize the energy-saving effort, the current standards and guidelines should provide sufficient information and requirement related to the ventilation performance.