Energy performance of glazings in European climates

Heinrich Manz and Urs-Peter Menti

Renewable Energy, 2012, vol. 37, issue 1, 226-232

Abstract: Windows can cause significant thermal energy gains or losses in buildings. Focusing on wintertime, a simple method for analyzing and discussing energy flows through glazings is presented. The impact of the glazing quality, the façade orientation, and the severity of the climate on the ratio of solar gains to thermal losses through glazings are shown. As regards the passive solar heating of buildings, the glazing quality is represented by the ratio of the total solar energy transmittance to the thermal transmittance (g/U). The severity of the climate is determined by the ratio of the interior-exterior temperature difference to the solar irradiance (Δθ/I). In this study, the method is based on monthly mean values of interior-exterior temperature difference and solar irradiance. Not at least because the approach is straightforward, it might also be valuable for educational purposes.

Keywords: Thermal transmittance; Total solar energy transmittance; Climate; Façade orientation; Solar gain; Thermal loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148111003089
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:renene:v:37:y:2012:i:1:p:226-232

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2011.06.016

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().