Application evaluation of passive energy-saving strategies in exterior envelopes for rural traditional dwellings in northeast of Sichuan hills, China

Abstract

With the increase of residents’ requirements for the living environment, the current indoor thermal environment cannot meet the needs of modern rural residents who live in the northeast of Sichuan, China. Passive energy-saving strategies can not only improve the thermal performance of envelopes but also create high economic benefits. Evaluating the application effect of passive energy-saving strategies for traditional dwellings can provide a guide for local residents and policy-makers to select rational passive strategies. Seven energy-saving strategies are proposed based on the current local building construction and heat transfer model, and then their energy-saving potential is evaluated by using EnergyPlus and the dynamic investment payback period method. Results show that adding exterior envelope insulation and setting on-top sunspaces on the roof simultaneously can save 83.9% of building energy consumption. But the most economic energy-saving strategy is only employing exterior envelope insulation for local traditional dwellings when considering the economy. It can save 842 CNY/m2 during 100 years and its dynamic investment payback period is 14.1 years. In addition, building orientation also affects the energy-saving effects and the energy-saving rate can be increased by 8.4% under the optimal orientation (facing south) compared with the worst orientation (facing west).

Research on energy-saving factors adaptability of exterior envelopes of university teaching-office buildings under different climates (China) based on orthogonal design and EnergyPlus

“…It demonstrates that effective thermal insulation is a priority for year-round energy saving for northern heating areas in China. Nevertheless, factors A , C and D all have lower impact levels in most of China (except for Guangzhou, Haikou and Kunming), further concluding that the form of insulation (factor A ) has a smaller impact on the annual total load and is much less important than the other factors, it is consistent with the finding in [ 8 ]. At the same time, it can be watched from the annual total load (factor D is weakened) that although factor D has a higher degree of influence on the cooling load for the northern thermal zones (SCZ, CZ) it is much less influential than on the heating load, however, it still differs in their impact levels for annual total load, which exhibits a higher influence on the HSWW.…”

“…However, active technologies usually face the problem of relatively low energy efficiency of the equipment. Therefore, the research and application of passive technologies have received extensive attention [ 7 , 8 ]. The main ones include, adding Trombe walls [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], lightweight concrete walls [ 12 , 13 ], insulation materials [ 14 ], phase-change materials [ 15 , 16 , 17 ], retro-reflective materials [ 18 ] and green roofs [ 19 , 20 ].…”

“…In the meantime, we can discover based on the above studies whether add Trombe walls [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 49 ] and insulation materials [ 8 , 14 ] for non-transparent envelopes (exterior walls or roofs) or replace high-performance transparent envelopes (exterior windows) [ 35 , 40 , 44 , 45 ], which all were designed to achieve indoor thermal comfort and energy saving by improving the thermal performance (or parameters) of the envelope, but all were limited to a single factor. Followed by most of the research on energy-saving strategies for envelopes was limited to a certain climate or a specific building type and the optimal configuration of envelopes under different climatic regions has not been well solved.…”

Analysis of Thermal Insulation Thickness for a Container House in the Yanqing Zone of the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games

“…So, the discount payback period that is calculated by taking into account the time value of currency and converting the future energy savings into the present value is more likely to be in line with the economic reality. Hence, this paper calculated the discount payback period of each insulation material under NZEB standard by Equations (3) and (4) [ 52 ]. where P D is the discount payback period, T ′ is the number of years with positive cumulative discounted value, CI represents cash inflow and its value equals to annual saving electric charge, CO represents cash outflow and its value equals to the increased cost of insulation, P / F is present-value compound interest factor and r is discount rate.…”