A method to estimate the heating and cooling degree-days for different climatic zones of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Saudi Arabia’s energy consumption is increasing astronomically. Saudi Building Code prescribes a fixed base temperature of 18.3℃ to estimate the heating degree-days and cooling degree-days. Using historical meteorological data (2005–2014), this article presents the heating degree-days and cooling degree-days estimated for the representative cities in all the five inhabited climatic zones of Saudi Arabia. We used the base temperatures of 14℃, 16℃ and 18℃ for heating degree-days, and 18℃, 20℃, 22℃, 24℃ and 28℃ for cooling degree-days for Dhahran, Guriat, Jeddah, Khamis Mushait and Riyadh cities. We developed multiple regression models for heating degree-days and cooling degree-days at various base temperatures for these zones. Degree-days for other cities in similar climates with limited input data can be computed with these. Lowering of base temperature by 2 K from 18℃ reduced the heating degree-days by 33–65%. At 14℃ of base temperature, the heating requirement reduced by 60–95%. Elevating the base temperature by 2 K from 18℃ lowered the cooling degree-days by 16–38%. At 28℃ of base temperature cooling can be completely eliminated in Khamis Mushait, and reduced by 65–92% in other cities. This observation merits rethinking about use of appropriate base temperatures that properly link the outdoor environment to reduce the energy consumption. Practical application: Using historical data, we developed regression models for predicting heating and cooling degree-days for five cities of Saudi Arabia in various climate zones without the historic data. Using these, we can estimate the changes in heating/cooling load due to the variation in base temperatures. For example, lowering base temperature by 2–4 K from 18℃ reduces the HDDs by 33–95% and elevating the base temperature by 2–4 K from 18℃ lowered the CDDs by 16–68%.

Historical global gridded degree‐days: A high‐spatial resolution database of CDD and HDD

“…By employing different T b in compiling DegDays_ 0p25_1970_2018, users can also have flexibility in application of degree‐days across broader climatic regions (Indraganti and Boussaa, ). Recently studies such as Krese et al, () and Lee et al, () have highlighted the sensitivity to the choice of T b both in assessment of energy demands, as well as in shaping policy measures for consumption of residential/commercial cooling and heating devices.…”

Yumurta tavuğu kümeslerinin dış duvarları için optimum yalıtım kalınlığının belirlenmesi

“…Many energy analysis techniques can be used for estimating energy requirements, however, the degree days (DDs) method is the one of the most practical and well-known method (Indraganti and Boussaa, 2017;Roshan et al, 2017). The calculation of DDs is based on reference temperature.…”

Determination of heating and cooling degree-day values and heating and cooling-days in broiler husbandry: central Anatolian case

“…If the value of (T max +T min )/2 in Equation 1 is greater than or equal to T b , the heating degree-day (HDG) value is calculated [12][13][14].…”

“…If the value of (T max +T min )/2 in Equation 2 is smaller than T b , the CDD value is calculated [13][14][15].…”