Application of design experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of climate factors on energy saving in green residential buildings

Abstract

Green building and energy consumption are two important issues in the construction industry. Residential buildings use the biggest share of energy throughout the world. Based on investigations, most of the existing green buildings are not really energy efficient. The estimation of energy consumptions for building has become a critical approach to achieve the goals on energy consumption and to decrease emissions. There are multiple factors for energy performance of buildings, such as building characteristics, main elements and equipment, climate factors, occupants and sociological influences. This paper shows a study of energy saving enhancement methods in residential buildings by considering the three climate factors that are temperature, humidity and airflow. To achieve this goal, building simulation and classical Design of Experiment (DOE) were combined to assess the effect of these climate factors on energy saving and cooling load. Based on the ANOVA test analysis, temperature and humidity have the most significant effect on energy saving. Moreover, the optimum saving energy within the range of the model with the value of 191525 is gained at the A (temperature) and B (humidity), which are equal to 20 °C and 60%, respectively. © 2014 Penerbit UTM Press. All rights reserved.