| Description |
In 2016 the building sector accounted for 21% of the world primary energy consumption and for the 39.5% of the primary energy consumed in the United States. Buildings are also responsible for a substantial share of the emissions in urban environments, causing air quality issues. The on-site conversion of energy, mainly for heating needs, causes the emission of several pollutants, such as NOx and PM2.5. Improving building energy efficiency is a great strategy to mitigate world energy consumption and consequent emissions. In order to do that, building energy modeling tools, such as EnergyPlus, are commonly used by building energy system designers to predict and optimize building energy loads. Building energy consumption is generally affected by what is inside the building (i.e.,occupants, appliances, HVAC systems, etc.) and by what is outside - i.e., weather conditions. In this regard, influences of weather on buildings can occur at different scales. At a macroscale level, climatic conditions will have an influence on the general mean weather variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation, humidity) leading to major differences, for example, on the conditions experienced by a building in Arizona and another one in Minnesota. A a micro-scale level, site-specific urban features may have an important impact on the climatic conditions. In turn, microclimatic conditions impact on the building energy consumption. In the same urban environment, because of microclimate effects such as urban heat islands, ambient temperature can vary considerably, altering building energy consumption. Furthermore, in relation to small size distributed energy sources, such as rooftop photovoltaic systems, it is important to take into account both the regional large-scale and sitespecific (small scale) weather conditions. As such, the goals of this research dissertation are as follows: . Aim 1: Investigate the different impacts of macroclimate and microclimate on building energy consumption. . Aim 2: Investigate the effects of the intrinsic variability of the micro-meteorology in urban areas on building electricity and natural gas consumption. Aim 3: Investigate the influence of macroclimate and micro-meteorological patterns on distributed energy sources (rooftop PV). The impact of microclimate on building energy consumption has been assessed. A new coupling methodology has been proposed to highly-detailed weather boundary conditions for building energy simulations. A new useful tool to retrieve weather data for building energy modeling has been introduced and tested to analyze microclimate temporal and spatial variability. Finally, the impact of microclimatic urban effects on solar radiation and rooftop PV systems has been assessed at city-scale and at building-scale. Methods and results from this research can provide useful guidelines for building energy modelers and urban planners to improve building energy efficiency and urban air quality through the use of renewable energies. |
