Ammar Al Shalabi

DeveNova Consulting, Halifax, Canada

al.shalabi@DeveNova.com

Abstract:

Inside temperature of buildings in Malaysia is greatly determined by local weather conditions, i.e. the sun. For this paper the influence of the environment on inside temperature was studied and also how an autonomous optimisation can help to find to meet the objective of lower inside temperature, hence cooling load. Design parameters used are building orientation and different insulation setups. Research was conducted on a standard Malaysian terrace house model arranged in array form. EnergyPlus is set to work alongside with GenOpt in order to carry out simulations and optimisations. The terrace house is designed with either the standard materials, which are normally used in residential construction, and a highly energy efficient building material, i.e aerated concrete block. The key is to find the ideal orientation that has lower inside temperatures. Subsequently, the optimisation shows the relationship between building materials, orientation, and inside temperature. The optimization started from viewing the lowest temperatures to optimized orientations and finally selecting the orientation, which is feasible throughout the year. Every month requires different orientation setting to suit the climate change, thus it is not possible to have a house built for multiple orientations. It is found that aligning the row of terrace houses at an orientation of 137.5º followed by 222.5º off North for the given model is best and will improve thermal comfort in sense of lower inside temperature throughout the year for both insulation setups. The average inside temperature is found to be 27.3 ºC and 25.9 ºC for standard Malaysian and highly efficient building materials, respectively. This renders to 0.153 kWh lower additional need of auxiliary electrical power based on a comfort neutral temperature of  26 ºC per design day.