Modeling Thermal Interactions between Buildings in an Urban Context

Xuan Luo, Tianzhen Hong and Yu-Hang Tang
Additional contact information
Xuan Luo: Building Technology and Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Tianzhen Hong: Building Technology and Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Yu-Hang Tang: Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: Thermal interactions through longwave radiation exchange between buildings, especially in a dense urban environment, can strongly influence a building’s energy use and environmental impact. However, these interactions are either neglected or oversimplified in urban building energy modeling. We developed a new feature in EnergyPlus to explicitly consider this term in the surface heat balance calculations and developed an algorithm to batch calculating the surrounding surfaces’ view factors using a ray-tracing technique. We conducted a case study with a district in the Chicago downtown area to evaluate the longwave radiant heat exchange effects between urban buildings. Results show that the impact of the longwave radiant effects on annual energy use ranges from 0.1% to 3.3% increase for cooling and 0.3% to 3.6% decrease for heating, varying among individual buildings. At the district level, the total energy demand increases by 1.39% for cooling and decreases 0.45% for heating. We also observe the longwave radiation can increase the exterior surface temperature by up to 10 °C for certain exterior surfaces. These findings justify a detailed and accurate way to consider the thermal interactions between buildings in an urban context to inform urban planning and design.

Keywords: thermal interaction; longwave radiation; view factor; urban building energy modeling; ray tracing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2382/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2382/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:9:p:2382-:d:356031

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().