Interdependent energy relationships between buildings at the street scale

Abstract

Regulated energy loads of buildings are typically explored at the scale of individual buildings, often in isolated (and idealised) circumstances. By comparison, there is little research into the performance of building groups that accounts for the interactions between buildings. Consequently, the energy efficiency (or penalty) of different urban configurations (such as a city street) are overlooked. The research presented here examines the energy demand of a city street in London, which is comprised of typical office buildings with internal energy gains associated with a daytime occupancy. Simulations are performed for office buildings placed in urban canyons that are defined by ratio of building height (H) to street width (W). The results show the annual energy demand is dominated by the cooling load, which can be significantly reduced through street design that provides shading by increasing the H/W value. However, the 'best' street design for modern office buildings may be incompatible with that for residences or, for that matter, outdoor climates.

Introduction: Anthropocene or Urbanocene?

“…Another difficulty is given by the multiple scale of urban climate phenomena and the interconnections between meso-climate, local climate and microclimate. For instance, to assess the impact of urban microclimate on the energy performance of buildings in a certain street, a multiscale approach including at least three steps is needed: (1) an analysis of the geographic and topographic features of the city and its surroundings, (2) an analysis of the urban fabric characteristics in terms of local climate zones (Palme et al 2018;Stewart and Oke 2012) and (3) an analysis of the three-dimensional shape and arrangement of buildings in the street canyon, the thermal and optical properties of urban and building materials and the thermal performance and function of buildings (Futcher et al 2018;Salvati and Kolokotroni 2019). Due to this complexity, it is not possible to draw easy-to-apply and universally valid climate guidelines, because every city is different, and so are the districts, streets and buildings across a city.…”

Urban microclimate in temperate climates: a summary for practitioners

“…The configuration of buildings with respect to one another and the thermal properties of buildings and pavements will influence building energy demand in complex ways (cf. Futcher et al 2018) Water (quality and quantity) Increases in water use (e.g. for irrigation) as well as runoff (due to paving and roads).…”

Modeling, Monitoring, and Validating Green Roof and Green Facade Solutions with Semantic City Models Using Low Cost Sensors and Open Software Infrastructures

“…It is an XML-based open data model widely used for storage and exchange of 3D city models which not only allows us to quantify the impact of spatial factored parameters (e.g., shading) in our test model but also the thermal performance of the studied buildings and the impact of neighboring buildings on one another. According to Futcher et al [51] these interactions with other buildings and their shading effects have a significant effect on the annual energy demand. This further facilitates the quantification of the studied phenomena on statistically significant spatial scales.…”