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.
[CHART]
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.
[CHART]
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.