SIMULATION SUPPORT FOR ENERGY EVALUATION OF HIGH DENSITY RESIDENTIAL TYPOLOGIES

Abstract

Energy consumption of buildings takes up about a third of Singapore’s total electricity production, and of which 19% is consumed by the residential sector alone. (Energy Market Authority, 2010) As new high density building typologies are developed to better cater to the population growth, there is a need to quickly assess the energy performance of the residential buildings. Simulation is useful in predicting building performance and allows architects and engineers to compare a broad range of designs variations, leading to the optimization of architectural designs. However, the preparation of a simulation model is a difficult and tedious process especially when a variation of building typologies needs to be explored through multiple simulations. Thus, it would be advantageous to formulate a general simulation process and performance indicator that can quickly assess the energy performance of the building typologies. The two main objectives of this research are to: 1. Establish a general simulation process that can quickly evaluate of energy consumption of different high-density typologies 2. Establish if façade solar insolation can be used as a performance indicator in the context of designing new high density residential typologies in Singapore. Following a combination of literature studies, field measurements and simulations, the proposed general simulation process reduces the number of runs required significantly. A 30 storey building which would require 480 simulation runs can be evaluated using the proposed general simulation process within 28 simulation runs. This research also establishes façade solar insolation as a reliable performance indicator, with a confidence level of 88%.