Correlation analysis of energy consumption and indoor long-term comfort conditions of residential buildings

Correlation analysis of energy consumption and indoor long-term comfort conditions of residential buildings

Authors:

Jin Zhou, Yalun Song and Feixiong Liu

Organisation of Presenter:

Hunan University, China

Abstract:

In China, energy consumption (EC) obtained by simulation is usually used as an indicator to assess residential building performance in design phase. For free running building, due to the absence of heating/cooling equipment, EC may not be an appropriate indicator and using it as measure of building thermal performance may cause misleading in design phase. In this paper, thermal discomfort rate (TDCR) was proposed as an indoor long-term thermal environment indicator, and was used to analyze the difference of building performance caused by using different evaluation indicators. Results show that there exists strong correlation between EC and TDCR when changing envelope design, but its trend and sensitivities may be different. So using EC to assess thermal performance of free running building in design phase may lead to poor indoor thermal environment. The results in this paper can be used to guide building design and energy-saving policy making.