Impact of building envelope design on energy consumption of light structure school building

Abstract

According to the local climate, an Auckland school building normally does not need air conditioning for cooling during the summer and only needs space heating during the winter. Previous study shows that the mean winter energy consumption is about 38% of the mean annual energy consumption of Auckland school buildings. The mean winter extra energy, which mainly includes space heating, water heating and other appliances related to winter indoor thermal conditions, is about 44% of winter energy consumptions. Extra winter energy of a school building is closely related to and impacted by building thermal design and thermal performance. Although different building design factors related to the main architectural feature, building elements and materials can affect the school energy consumption differently and simultaneously, the relationship between building design data and school energy consumption data can still be identified. With a larger number of sample school buildings, this study focuses on impact strength of building design factors on school winter extra energy consumptions and identifies quantitative relationships between the building design data and the winter extra energy consumption data, which can be used to proximately estimate the amount of saving winter extra energy consumption associated with the change of a design datum for the future school development. In Auckland, there are 425 schools including primary, intermediate and high schools. Real energy consumption and building design data of 57 local schools (13.4% of the total number of Auckland schools) are randomly selected for this study.