Quantifying Impacts of Urban Microclimate on a Building Energy Consumption—A Case Study

Jiying Liu, Mohammad Heidarinejad, Saber Khoshdel Nikkho, Nicholas W. Mattise and Jelena Srebric
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Jiying Liu: School of Thermal Engineering, Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan 250101, China
Mohammad Heidarinejad: Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA
Saber Khoshdel Nikkho: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Nicholas W. Mattise: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
Jelena Srebric: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 18, 1-21

Abstract: This paper considered an actual neighborhood to quantify impacts of the local urban microclimate on energy consumption for an academic building in College Park, USA. Specifically, this study accounted for solar irradiances on building and ground surfaces to evaluate impacts of the local convective heat transfer coefficient (CHTC), infiltration rate, and coefficient of performance (COP) on building cooling systems. Using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) allowed for the calculation of local temperature and velocity values and implementation of the local variables in the building energy simulation (BES) model. The discrepancies among the cases with different CHTCs showed slight influence of CHTCs on sensible load, in which the maximum variations existed 1.95% for sensible cooling load and 3.82% for sensible heating load. The COP analyses indicated windward wall and upstream roof are the best locations for the installation of these cooling systems. This study used adjusted infiltration rate values that take into account the local temperature and velocity. The results indicated the annual cooling and heating energy increased by 2.67% and decreased by 2.18%, respectively.

Keywords: urban microclimate; energy consumption; computational fluid dynamics (CFD); building energy simulation (BES) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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