Coupling a Building Energy Simulation Tool with a Microclimate Model to Assess the Impact of Cool Pavements on the Building’s Energy Performance Application in a Dense Residential Area

Abstract

Replacing conventional pavements with the corresponding high albedo ones constitutes a well-known technique to improve outdoor thermal environment of modern cites. Since most of the existing studies assess the impact of the high albedo pavements at the pedestrian’s height and with respect to thermal comfort, this study aims to examine the effect of the application of highly reflective pavements on the heating and cooling energy needs of a building unit, located inside a dense urban area. Aiming at a higher accuracy of the energy performance simulations, an integrated computational method between ENVI-met model, Meteonorm weather data generator and Energy Plus software is established, to consider the site-specific microclimatic characteristics of the urban areas. The analysis is performed both for the design and the aged albedo values as significant changes may occur due to aging process. The analysis revealed that the application of cool materials on the ground surfaces only marginally affects the energy performance of the examined building unit, both for the design and the aged albedo value; changes on the annual heating and cooling energy demand, for both albedo scenarios did not exceed 1.5% revealing the limited potential of cool pavements regarding the improvement of the energy performance of urban building units.

A methodology for generating a synthetic local urban climate weather profile for building energy simulations in hot arid areas

“…(Spangernberg, et al, 2008). The software has been used widely in performing micro-urban modelling and outdoor thermal comfort analysis within the urban canopy layer (UCL) (Tsoka et al, 2019;Yang & Lin 2016;Roth & Lim 2016;Elnabawi et al, 2013). The model simulation grid of the ASU campus used was 80 x 40 x 90 with a resolution of 2 m x 2 m x 4 m, as X, Y and Z respectively (Figure 4).…”

Modeling and Validation of the Cool Summer Microclimate Formed by Passive Cooling Elements in a Semi-Outdoor Building Space

“…In particular, vegetation models have been applied to numerical simulations to evaluate solar shading [43][44][45][46], wind break [47], and overall cooling effects [48,49] derived from vegetation on the indoor thermal environment. The effects of cool pavements and materials on building energy use and thermal environment have also been evaluated [50,51]. However, there has been limited discussion on the effects of cool microclimates for a spatial scale less than 1 m, with the detailed vertical distribution formed by vegetation and cool materials.…”

Evaluation of Different Roof Types Concerning Daylight in Industrial Buildings during the Initial Design Phase: Methodology and Case Study

“…Green building notions [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and energy autonomy are becoming increasingly important in the last decades, especially in the industrial sector, where energy costs from machinery in the past used to overshadow other aspects of energy consumption. As progressively traditional approaches of manufacturing have yielded to leaner methods of production and management systems, there has been an increased pressure on architecture to focus and address other aspects of energy "waste".…”