Abstract
The building industry is regarded a major contributor to climate change as energy consumption from buildings accounts for 40% of the total energy. The types of thermal comfort models used to predict the heating and cooling loads are critical to save energy in operative buildings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). In this research, the internal air temperatures were recorded for over one year under the free floating mode with no heating or cooling, then the number of hours required for heating or cooling were calculated based on fixed sets of operative temperatures (18 °C–24 °C) and the adaptive thermal comfort model to estimate the number of hours per year required for cooling and heating to sustain the occupants’ thermal comfort for four full-scale housing test modules at the campus of the University of Newcastle, Australia. The adaptive thermal comfort model significantly reduced the time necessary for mechanical cooling and heating by more than half when compared with the constant thermostat setting used by the air-conditioning systems installed on the site. It was found that the air-conditioning system with operational temperature setups using the adaptive thermal comfort model at 80% acceptability limits required almost half the operating energy when compared with fixed sets of operating temperatures. This can be achieved by applying a broader range of acceptable temperature limits and using techniques that require minimal energy to sustain the occupants’ thermal comfort.
Highlights
The building industry is regarded a major contributor to climate change as energy consumption from buildings accounts for the release of around 33% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1]
The largest energy consumer in the European Union (EU) is the building sector, and toward the aim of more energy efficient buildings, a new revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in Europe (EPBD) (EU) 2018/844 working toward more energy efficient buildings has been published in the European Union Official Journal (L156) and will take effect on 9 July 2018 to hasten the pace of new energy-efficient buildings and the cost-effective renovation of current buildings’ in European Union (EU) countries
The findings suggest that the level of control of the occupants over their thermal environment could reduce thermal energy consumption by almost 10% without impacting occupant thermal comfort [10]
Summary
The building industry is regarded a major contributor to climate change as energy consumption from buildings accounts for the release of around 33% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1]. A field study in an air-conditioned office building showed that the adaptive model improved the thermal acceptance of occupants when compared to the PMV/PPD model with lower energy consumption [21]. Ventilated buildings consume less than half the energy of air-conditioned buildings as the inhabitants adapt to a much wider range of temperatures outside the comfort zone defined by the PMV model [10]. The adaptive thermal comfort results were compared with the real data from the housing modules with installed air-conditioning systems with fixed sets of operation temperatures based on the predicted mean vote model
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