EFFECT OF PASSIVE DESIGN STRATEGIES ON ENERGY CONSUMPTION OF BUILDINGS

Abstract

Passive design strategies such as building orientation, materials as well as shading devices could be incorporated into the building to bring about greater energy efficiency. This study will focus on these three aspects of passive design strategies.

Building orientation plays an important role in minimising energy consumption as the orientation would affect the amount and intensity of solar radiation into the building.

Glass, having the ability to incorporate daylight as well as its aesthetically appealing appearance, makes it a popular choice of material as façade. However, the influx of daylight induced solar radiation into the building, making it is essential to select the right materials which emit lesser solar radiation. There is a wide range of glass types in the industry that the building owners could employ but there is limited evidence showcasing the energy and cost implication for using various type of glass. As such, computational simulation and lifecycle cost analysis were conducted to analyse the energy and cost implication of various strategies. Interview was also conducted to understand the fundamental principles of glass.

The computation simulation was designed in such a way where a thirty stories residential building was simulated under Singapore weather condition. The building consists for four zones running on residential variable air volume air-conditioner. Each simulated zones face different orientation (north , south ,east west) so as to understand the impact of orientation on building energy performance. Nine simulations were conducted to analyse the impact of various glass type and shading devices.

Results have shown that the optimal orientation would be north facing due to lower intensity of solar radiation that it experience. With the help of the lifecycle cost analysis, double low emissivity glass serve as the best alternative glass type after single tinted green glass. Reason being, the single tinted green glass prevents large amount of daylight into building, making it impossible to harness daylight into the building. In addition, results have also shown that horizontal overhangs reap the greater energy efficiency in Singapore as compared to vertical shading devices. The high angle of incident of the sun rays makes it more efficient to prevent large influx of sunlight by incorporating horizontal overhangs.