Sunflower inspired urban city pattern to improve solar energy utilization in low solar radiation countries

Abstract

Cities consume a huge amount of energy to satisfy people’s necessities. Most of the existing city patterns do not consider passive energy solutions when planning. This study investigates the maximum available sunny areas for the buildings’ surfaces (rooftops and facades) generated in low solar radiation with long shadow length locations. This has been done by studying the orientation and distribution of the residential plots in the different urban panning patterns. For investigative purposes, a city model is planned according to the most common urban planning patterns, which are grid and radial patterns in addition to a newly proposed and novel sunflower urban planning pattern that mimics Mother Nature. The alternating distribution in the sunflower pattern allows the sun to reach every building in this pattern equally. Warsaw was selected as an example of low solar radiation and long shadow length city. The results show that the proposed sunflower pattern outperforms the grid and radial patterns by a percentage of 4% for the available sunny rooftop areas and a percentage of 12% for the available sunny facade areas.