Air Conditioning for Heating and Cooling
Evidently, the highest percentage of home energy consumption belong to the heating and cooling systems. In this section, a comparison is made between the heating and cooling performances of energy consumption with respect to the physical conditions of buildings. Both criteria were used 24 hours a day during a year, given the type of climate; accordingly, the building’s temperature remained within the range of 17-25℃ during hot and cold periods.
Figure 4 shows the energy consumption in samples with the heating system in operation during the cold period of the year. There are no significant differences between the amounts of energy consumption in samples that included below 20% openings. However, the amount of consumption changed by transforming the lengths into widths and increasing the openings. In other words, increase in the openings results in increased absorption of sunlight which reduces energy consumption. In this regard, Samples B, C and S showed the same amount of consumption while Sample H demonstrated the highest consumption amount. Nonetheless, this analysis did not hold true for Sample B at the transparency range of above 80%; subsequently, due to the square shape of this sample in this time period, the required heat reaches its maximum limit, as can be seen in Figure 5.
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Figure 5.: The amount of energy consumed by the A/C system for heating during a year, in the examined samples.
The examination of the required energy for cooling by the A/C yielded similar results. Samples B, C and E showed similar amounts of energy consumption while Samples D and E demonstrated higher energy consumption given their longer lengths. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the extent of transparency in a building can have the highest effect on the amount of energy consumption for air conditioning.
Considering Figure 5 which was related to A/C for heating and cooling, the total amount of energy consumed by this system is shown in Figure 6. Findings suggest that samples with longer lengths and more openings have a higher energy consumption; moreover, samples with proportions closer to a square demonstrated better performances.
As can be seen in Figure 6, there are disorders in Samples B and E at 80-100% and 20-40% transparency ranges, respectively. It was previously pointed out that the reason behind such a disorder in Sample B involves the amount of energy consumption for A/C heating during a year; accordingly, consumption raises when wall transparency is increased and there would be an abrupt jump in the 80-100% range. The cause behind this disorder in Sample E is also the same; the only difference here is the transparency range. The overall results of analyses on transparency of walls and its role in energy consumption are listed in Table 3.
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Figure 6.: The amount of energy consumed by the A/C system for heating and cooling during a year, in the examined eight samples.
Table 3.: The overall results of samples’ performances regarding the amount of energy consumption considering wall transparency.