Measurement of energy consumption in buildings

Abstract

Building energy consumption, which consists of residential and commercial buildings, accounts for around 20-40% of the total delivered energy consumption worldwide. It is vital to analyze the current building energy consumption to find out the main energy consumption targets with energy saving potentials, and hence to provide guidelines for efficient building energy system design and retrofitting. This chapter revolves around the energy consumption of commercial buildings and residential buildings in China and selected foreign countries. First, the current building energy consumption of China, which is divided into four categories, is analyzed. Then, the detailed energy consumption of each part of the energy system in commercial buildings is discussed. Afterward, ways to increase the efficiency of air conditioning systems are particularly analyzed. Next, it presents an analysis of and a comparison between the energy consumptions regarding different energy consumption end users of residential buildings in China downtown and selected countries, namely USA, Japan, and Italy. The differences of air conditioning energy consumptions among these countries are explained from the prospect of types of air conditioning systems, namely centralized and split air conditioning systems. This chapter helps to understand the energy consumption situations of commercial and residential buildings and the directions for increasing the efficiency of air conditioning systems are proposed.