Building Performance under Untypical Weather Conditions: A 40-Year Study of Hong Kong

Abstract

As a common engineering practice, the buildings are usually evaluated under the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), which represents the common weather situation. The warm and cool conditions, however, can affect the building performance considerably, yet building performances under such conditions cannot fully be given by the conventional TMY. This paper gives approaches to constructing the weather data that represents several warm and cool conditions and compares their differences by studying the cumulative cooling demands of a typical building in a hot and humid climate. Apart from the Extreme Weather Year (EWY), the Near-Extreme Weather Year (NEWY) and Common warm/cool Years (CY) data are proposed according to the occurrence distributions of the weather over the long term. It was found that the cooling demands of NEWY and EWY differ by 4.8% from the cooling needs of TMY. The difference between the cooling demands of NEWY and CY for most calendar months can be 20% and 15%, respectively. For the hot months, the cooling demands under NEWY and CY take 7.4–11.6% and 2.3–5.6% differences from those under TMY. The uncertainties of building performance due to the ever-changing weather conditions can be essential to the robustness of building performance evaluations.

Application of Novel Phase Change Material Constructive Solution for Thermal Regulation of Passive Solar Buildings

“…The building sector has attracted global attention as a significant contributor to energyrelated issues, accounting for 40% of worldwide energy consumption [1] and approximately 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions [2]. In this regard, the refurbishment of existing buildings will play a crucial role in achieving energy and climate objectives outlined in the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Agenda 2030 [3], given that 35% of the European Union's buildings are over 50 years old and about 75% of the building stock is considered energy inefficient [4].…”