Energy-Saving Potential of Building Envelope Designs in Residential Houses in Taiwan

Chi-Ming Lai,Yao-Hong Wang

doi:10.3390/en4112061

Abstract

The key factors in the energy-saving design of a building’s exterior in Taiwan are the thermal performance of the roof and window glazing. This study used the eQUEST software to investigate how different types of roof construction, window glasses and sunshield types affect the energy consumption in residential buildings under common scenarios. The simulation results showed that the use of an appropriate window glass significantly reduced the annual energy consumption, followed by the shading device, whereas the roof construction produced less of an energy-efficiency benefit. By using a low-E glass and a 1.5 × 1.5 m box shading (e.g., balcony), this could save approximately 15.1 and 13.6% of the annual electricity consumption of air conditioners, respectively. Therefore, having control over the dominant factors in the building envelope is indeed an important step in the path to achieving energy savings and carbon reduction in residential houses.

Highlights

With the continuous increase in the urban population and the air temperature year after year, the proportion of residential houses using air conditioning has increased, reaching 80% in 2000 [1]
Software was used to simulate the energy consumption of the buildings within the target city block as described in Section 2.3, and the results verify that the buildings facing west have greater electricity consumption than the buildings facing other directions
A comparison of the annual electricity consumption among all of the variables is shown in Taiwan, the results showed that the buildings that used the two-layer low-E glass and the three-layer low-E glass had the greatest energy efficiency, whereas buildings with roofs that underwent retrofit measures had a limited improvement in energy efficiency

Summary

Introduction

With the continuous increase in the urban population and the air temperature year after year, the proportion of residential houses using air conditioning has increased, reaching 80% in 2000 [1]. More than 99% of Taiwan’s energy consumption relies on imports, mainly of oil, coal and natural gas. The sum of these three products is almost equal to the total energy supply in Taiwan. When the CO2 emission assessment of buildings is carried out on the life cycle span, the amount of CO2 emissions attributable to construction, building material production and transportation for the construction process of reinforced concrete (RC) residential buildings was only 25% of the total amount of CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions from daily usage in buildings occupied greater than 60% of the life cycle span This shows the importance of reducing CO2 emissions, and energy consumption, in our daily lives

Methods

Results

Conclusion