USING ENERGYPLUS SOFTWARE TO MODEL GREEN ROOF

Abstract

In consideration of the efforts to emphasize “green” in the building industry, it is important for building owners and designers to incorporate green features into the new or even the existing building especially during the design process. The reason to incorporate these green features is to reduce the impact of massive energy consumption in buildings, and at the mean time to address the environmental issues through the attempt to encourage sustainability.

While much has been invested to encourage relevant parties from the building industry to carry out ‘green’ practices and integrate green features into buildings; the responses were still poor judging from the lack in the level of participation. This could be due to the high implementation cost arising from the installation of such green features and further dampened by the lack of knowledge on their effectiveness. Therefore, in order to encourage building owners to incorporate green features to their buildings, which will eventually help in reducing the total energy consumption in the long term, EnergyPlus building energy simulation software is being introduced in this paper. This simulation software allows energy modeller to explore the green design options based on the physical model created, specifically on the study of green features, which are able to be developed and integrated into the software in order to carry out the simulation. With this, building owners can count on the estimated results in making decision whether or not to incorporate the green features into their building.

In this paper, green roof is selected for evaluation due to its potential energy saving qualities. The evaluation of the EnergyPlus simulated result is split into 2 parts. The first part of the study comprises the comparison of results between the simulations results against the data gathered from the field study conducted on the green roof in the BCA’s Zero Energy Building. In furtherance, the second part of this dissertation will further validate the findings by analysing the simulated result through the 2 scenarios created, which is to assume that the whole roof is covered with vegetation and the other one without. Finally, the paper will conclude with the analysis and discussion of all results.