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Abstract: Building energy computer simulation software is a useful tool for achieving sophisticated design and evaluation of the thermal performance of buildings. For successful thermal and energy simulation of buildings, it requires hourly weather data such as dry bulb air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, etc. Nowadays, an urban city faces a problem of an urban heat island which causes the urban area to have a higher air temperature than the rural region. Since the currently available weather dataset used in building simulation software mainly comes from weather stations located in remote and rural areas, the impact of the urban heat island on thermal and energy performance of buildings may not be effectively reflected. This paper reports an approach to construct a modified typical meteorological weather file, taking into account the urban heat island effect in the summer season. Field measurements have been carried out in the summer months and the corresponding urban heat island intensities were then determined. With a morphing algorithm, an existing typical meteorological year weather file was modified. An office building and a typical residential flat were modeled with a renowned building energy simulation program EnergyPlus. Computer simulations were conducted using the existing and modified typical meteorological year weather files. It was found that there was around a 10% increase in air-conditioning demand caused by the urban heat island effect in both cases. The implications of this and further work will also be discussed in this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In a residential building, a balcony of an upper floor can act as an overhang; and provide solar shading and reduction in electricity consumption of air-conditioner (A/C) for a flat on the underneath floor. However, some residential flats located on the lower levels may receive substantial self-shading effect from some adjacent flats in the same building block, leading to an insignificant shading effect from a balcony. As there is substantial amount of energy consumed and pollutant generated during the production and disposal of a balcony, it is vital to investigate the energy and environmental performance of residential flats installed with balconies at various floor levels. The objective of this study is to investigate an appropriate floor level of a residential building above which balconies should be incorporated. A 21-story residential building was modeled using EnergyPlus. Simulation results indicated that, for a west-facing flat, only the flats located on 15/F to 20/F can give acceptable environmental payback periods, ranging from 58.3 years to 40.7 years, i.e. within the lifespan (60 years) of a building. The corresponding annual savings in A/C consumption range from 234.9 MJ (2.60%) to 336.7 MJ (3.57%). The research methodology and findings are presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The concern on climate change leads to growing demand for minimization of energy use. As building is one of the largest energy consuming sectors, it is essential to study the impact of climate change on building energy performance. In this regard, building energy simulation software is a useful tool. A set of appropriate typical weather files is one of the key factors towards successful building energy simulation. This paper reports the work of developing a set of weather data files for subtropical Hong Kong, taking into the effect of future climate change. Projected monthly mean climate changes from a selected General Circulation Model for three future periods under two emission scenarios were integrated into an existing typical meteorological year weather file by a morphing method. Through this work, six sets of future weather files for subtropical Hong Kong were produced. A typical office building and a residential flat were modeled using building simulation program EnergyPlus. Hourly building energy simulations were carried out. The simulated results indicate that there will be substantial increase in A/C energy consumption under the impact of future climate change, ranging from 2.6% to 14.3% and from 3.7% to 24% for office building and residential flat, respectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Double skin façade can be defined as a building façade covering one or several stories with multiple skins. The skins may be air tight or ventilated. With sophisticated study and design, buildings constructed with double skin façade can have better thermal performance than the conventional single skin façade. This paper reports the findings on the energy performance of double skin façade applied to a typical office building under the climatic condition in Hong Kong. An experimental setup was established and the measured data were used to verify the theoretical model developed via the EnergyPlus simulation program. The validated model was then used to evaluate the energy performance of double skin façade with various configurations including glazing type (clear, absorptive or reflective glass), glazing position (inner or outer pane) and glazing layers (single or double glazing material). The results indicate that a double skin façade system with single clear glazing as the inner pane and double reflective glazing as the outer pane can provide an annual saving of around 26% in building cooling energy, as compared to a conventional single skin façade with single absorptive glazing. However, the long payback period of 81 years makes the double skin façade system economically infeasible. Support and motivation are needed from the local government in order to foster successful and widespread application of the double skin façade system in buildings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Building Bio-Climatic Charts are proposed for different climate change scenarios. • Time-varying significance of nine design parameters in this century are provided. • Effectiveness of airtightness will increase up to 329% by the end of this century. • Cooling potentials of natural ventilation will significantly decrease up to 69%. • A holistic passive design can reduce the building annual cooling load by 56.7%. The application of passive design strategies is crucial at the early architectural design stage for building energy use minimization. However, the time-varying effectiveness of passive design strategies in responding to future climate change in hot and humid climates are rather limited in the literature. This paper aims to examine the dynamic effectiveness of passive design strategies for residential buildings in Hong Kong under the context of future climate change. Using the newly developed hourly weather data and adaptive comfort standard model, the dynamic effectiveness of viable passive design strategies for residential buildings are evaluated over time in the 21st century by plotting Givoni building bio-climatic charts (BBCC) and simulation-based sensitivity analyses in a validated EnergyPlus model. Results show that solar protection strategies are still the highly sensitive strategies for building energy performance and the effectiveness of external windows' airtightness is expected to increase up to 329% by the end of this century, whereas the cooling potential of ventilation utilization will significantly decrease over time. When the different combination of sensitive passive design parameters is implemented onto the baseline residential building model for different climate scenarios, the annual and peak cooling load can be reduced up to 56.7% and 64.5%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The climate change is identified by the ground measurement of HK over the 37 years. • The building energy needs can be influenced by the climate change. • The TMY is suggested to be updated every 10 years or less for the climate change. • 10 to 12 years of the latest data can be proper for TMY in the changing climate. The weather data is essential to simulation-based building energy studies. The weather data should render the features of the changing climate. The typical meteorological year (TMY) developments using the long-term climate data, however, may weaken the impact of the recent climate change and the corresponding building energy responses. This paper studies the changes of the climate data (by ground measurements) and their impacts on the simulation results of the subtropical Hong Kong over 37 years. The climate changes for solar radiation, temperature and wind speed were summarised, and their daily total, average, extreme, and/or deviation values were presented. The typical weather data developed by the ground measurements of different times and period lengths (within the 37 years) determined the cooling load of a representative building in the Hong Kong, and the outcomes were compared to that of the yearly data. The period (length) of the raw measurements and the update frequency of TMY were optimized for the building energy simulations in the changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A coupled simulation model of urban microclimate and building energy is developed for high density cities. • Reason agreements were observed between predicted air temperature and measurement data. • Air temperature in street canyons can rise 1–3 ºC on average above the ambient in summer. • Anthropogenic heat dominates temperature rise in street canyons in high density cities. • Temperature rise in street canyon can increase building cooling demand by 15% in summer. The energy performance of a building in a dense city depends to some extent on its surroundings. The impact of the built form, together with anthropogenic heat gains from traffic and building HVAC exhaust, determines external environmental conditions at the Urban Canopy Layer. Existing building energy models are limited in accounting for micro-scale variations of the urban microclimate, which may significantly modify a building's energy performance in density cities. This paper presents the Urban Building Energy and Climate (UrBEC) model, a coupled urban microclimate model (UMM) and building energy model (HTB2) developed to assess the time varying energy performance of a cluster of buildings and the combined heat gains to the external space from direct and reflected solar radiation, traffic and the exhaust from HVAC systems in a high-density city. The simulation results were evaluated by comparison with field measurement data collected from the Sai Ying Pun neighbourhood in Hong Kong, on a summer and winter day. Predicted and measured air and surface temperature at the four locations were found to be in reasonable agreement. Simulation results indicate an average of 1-3 ºC of temperature rise in street canyons compared with the ambient air in summer. Street level air is predicted to be 0.6 ºC warmer than those at higher levels (20m +). Anthropogenic heat from traffic and building HVAC exhaust are the dominant contributors to temperature rise in street canyons in summer, exceeding the contribution from urban surfaces. The predicted building cooling demand is expected to increase up to 15 % in summer due to the warming effect in street canyons. The UrBEC model runs significantly faster than current CFD-based approaches. Therefore, the model has the potential to support early stage design and planning decisions in a dense city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]