Passive Heating and Cooling Potential Strategies: A Comparison between Moderate Summers and Warm Winters Climate Zones

Abstract

In this work, a comparison between different potential natural ventilation strategies used in different climate zones are investigated. As an example of moderate summer climate zone, London city has been selected, while Dubai city has been selected as a warm winter climate zone. The influence of external wind speed and pressure was studied using Autodesk Flow Design Software. Then CFD simulations have been generated inside the building using IES Virtual Environment software to study the indoor ventilation (Micro-Flow analysis) and to demonstrate the success of the adopted potential strategies in enhancing the indoor climate conditions. Hourly Analysis Program (HAP) was used to calculate the cooling/heating load of the building and to check the energy savings. The results demonstrated that comfort conditions within the interior space of the building were met during certain months of the year using passive heating/cooling strategies alone (without the need of HVAC system). HAP energy modeling results showed that the annual space cooling for Dubai model dropped from almost 58,000 kW per year to almost 42,000 kW with a total energy savings of 18.6% (including all energy consumption parameters). On the other hand, London model results showed that the annual interior space heating dropped from almost 36,000 kW to almost 28,000 kW with a total energy savings of 16.4%.