Modelling the cooling energy saving potential of facade greening in summer for a set of building typologies in mid-latitudes

Densely populated city quarters lacking green increase the urban heat island effect and thermal discomfort outdoors and indoors. Facade greenings (FG) cool buildings and their surroundings through shading, insulation and transpiration, as demonstrated experimentally. FG also reduces energy consumpti...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy and buildings 2021-05, Vol.238, p.110816, Article 110816
Main Authors: Hoffmann, Karin A., Šuklje, Tomaž, Kozamernik, Jana, Nehls, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Building cooling
Building greening
Buildings
Climatic conditions
Cooling
Energy
Energy conservation
Energy consumption
Evaporative cooling
Facades
Heat stress reduction
Insulation
Mass transfer
Modelling
Population density
Thermal comfort
Transpiration
Urban heat island
Urban heat islands
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Densely populated city quarters lacking green increase the urban heat island effect and thermal discomfort outdoors and indoors. Facade greenings (FG) cool buildings and their surroundings through shading, insulation and transpiration, as demonstrated experimentally. FG also reduces energy consumption for building cooling. Because of complex interrelationships, to assess the performance of FG towards different buildings is not trivial. Therefore, a validated numerical heat-mass transfer model is proposed and applied to describe the energy saving potential of a one-layered FG for nine wall compositions representing relevant building types, climatic conditions in Berlin, Germany and Ljubljana, Slovenia and the south- and westward exposition. The buildings represent several functions and a range of wall insulation levels. For each scenario, temperatures and energy in- and outflows are calculated from June to September (20-year average). FG can reduce exterior and interior wall temperatures by up to 17 K and 2.9 K, respectively. For the whole period, energy savings range from 2 to 16 kWh m–2 depending on building and climate. Results show that both, level of insulation, thermal inertia, exposition and climatic conditions must be considered when predicting FG’s energy saving potential for buildings. The introduced model (http://dx.doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-10512) can be used to predict cooling performances and to identify priority buildings for FG implementation in cities.
ISSN:0378-7788
1872-6178
DOI:10.1016/j.enbuild.2021.110816