Abstract
This paper considered an actual neighborhood to quantify impacts of the local urban microclimate on energy consumption for an academic building in College Park, USA. Specifically, this study accounted for solar irradiances on building and ground surfaces to evaluate impacts of the local convective heat transfer coefficient (CHTC), infiltration rate, and coefficient of performance (COP) on building cooling systems. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) allowed for the calculation of local temperature and velocity values and implementation of the local variables in the building energy simulation (BES) model. The discrepancies among the cases with different CHTCs showed slight influence of CHTCs on sensible load, in which the maximum variations existed 1.95% for sensible cooling load and 3.82% for sensible heating load. The COP analyses indicated windward wall and upstream roof are the best locations for the installation of these cooling systems. This study used adjusted infiltration rate values that take into account the local temperature and velocity. The results indicated the annual cooling and heating energy increased by 2.67% and decreased by 2.18%, respectively.
Highlights
In the last two decades, numerous cities face serious problems of rapid urbanization [1,2], energy consumption [3,4,5,6,7], and climate change [8,9]
Liu et al [13] found that the local microclimate, characterized by the exterior surface convective heat transfer coefficients (CHTCs), could affect the total cooling energy consumption by 4%
The local urban microclimate environment has an influence on the external surface CHTCs and
Summary
In the last two decades, numerous cities face serious problems of rapid urbanization [1,2], energy consumption [3,4,5,6,7], and climate change [8,9]. It is estimated more than 70% of people will reside in the built environment by 2050. Liu et al [13] found that the local microclimate, characterized by the exterior surface convective heat transfer coefficients (CHTCs), could affect the total cooling energy consumption by 4%. Yang et al [14] showed that a significant cooling load reduction of 18.8%
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