Reducing the Cooling Energy of Existing Commercial Buildings with Passive Thermal Mass

Abstract

A major part of sustainability theory and practice is to reuse existing building stock wherever possible and to refrain from demolition and rebuilding minimising the resources and associated energy used. Many buildings therefore have internal refurbishments during their lives, the scale of which can range from minor fit outs through major interior refurbishments to finally those which see the central services replaced also. The ability to greatly improve the efficiency of a building during only minor refurbishment is an attractive proposal which would provide an intermediate opportunity to building owners to reduce cooling energy and its associated cost and more importantly avoid disruption to the base building services. This study investigates the effect of exploiting inherent building thermal mass in a standard commercial building in the Australian cities of Adelaide and Brisbane, and demonstrates the energy savings that can be made in the order of 30%.