Impact of energy efficiency standard and climate change on summer thermal comfort conditions: A case study in apartment building

Abstract

On account of the global warming, there is an increased concern about the overheating risk in free running buildings. This study investigates the influence of local energy efficiency standard, TS 825and climate change on summer thermal comfort in buildings. It concentrates on a typical apartment building in the context of Istanbul, Turkey by using energy simulation tools EnergyPlus and DesignBuilder. The paper starts with a brief introduction and the concepts of common adaptive thermal comfort models. It is followed by a description of the method. Then the required hourly weather data sets for future are prepared and two thermal models are analyzed with a standard weather data set, as well as the IPCC climate change scenario A2 for the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s. Lastly, the simulation results which are evaluated based on adaptive thermal comfort approach according to European Standard EN 15251 are shown in detail. The results present an important effect of the climate change on summer thermal comfort and they show small distinctness in the amount of uncomfortable times in summer between apartment buildings applied measures in TS 825 (Model 2) and not applied (Model 1).The average difference between models is 5% according to TMY 2 weather data. It would be only 1.8% in 2080. In addition, TS 825in buildings are the key to vary level of thermal comfort conditions in free running buildings. Therefore it should be updated and extended in view of the effects of climate change.