Passive Design for Energy Efficiency

2017 : Mentors : Location :

Second year of master degree

Abed Tablada (NUS) and Karen Allacker (KU Leuven) Nusajaya development, Southern Malaysia

Part 1 Narrow Focus Within A Broad Topic

Part 2 Specific locality in A hot and humid environment

Part 3 Elimination through literature

Part 4 Quantitative Analysis

Part 5 Discussion and conclusion

Global population is booming and particularly in urbanized regions in the tropics. Millions of homes will be built to shelter this growing population. In the light of climate change, we have to look for a sustainable way to build those homes.

How to reduce energy consumption in tropical urban districts, using passive design strategies? This is what I worked on at the National University of Singapore. I chose a site in the Johor Bahru region in southern Malaysia and tested a generic district on its energy consumption when changing several parameters.

In a first phase, I used academic literature to select indicators, site coverage, floor area ratio and shape factor. Then, through preliminary simulations for natural ventilation, daylighting and solar radiation, I selected a typology, a tower with a podium and a courtyard.

The second phase consisted of an energy simulation of a set of variations of this typology in Energy Plus. I set up a parametric model of a generic urban district in Rhino and Grasshopper and calculated the annual energy use and energy generation through solar panels.

Lowest consumption was reached for a high floor area ratio, a high shape factor and a high site coverage in case 99. The energy generated by solar panels installed on the tower’s roof is sufficient to meet the on-site demand.

However, this conclusion is only valid within the assumptions made for this study. I only looked at the energy aspect of urban sustainability, while many other important aspects play their role. The choice of location, typology and software also greatly impacts the results.

Part 1 Narrow focus within a broad topic

2 Specific locality in A hot and humid environment through literature

Narrow focus within a broad topic 2 Specific locality in A hot and humid environment 3 Elimination through literature

Quantitative Analysis

Quantitative Analysis

Case

Energy generation, which is equal for all cases and cooling energy demand for cases 99 (blue) and 70 (red).

Energy generation, which is equal for all cases cooling energy demand for cases 99 (blue) 70 (red).

*Within