Design and Optimization of Energy Consumption for a Low-Rise Building With Seasonal Variations Under Composite Climate of India

The need for maintaining thermal comfort conditions inside the building is a significant contributor to the total energy requirements of the buildings. Thus far, limited research has offered some strategies to mitigate the effect of ambient conditions on the thermal comfort and the building energy requirements for composite climatic zone in India. In order to address this problem, this study was conducted to evaluate and analyze the impacts of four different passive design strategies, i.e., insulation, cool roof, phase change material (PCM) thermal storage system, and shading, on thermal comfort and energy demand in the two-storey building situated in the composite climate zone of Delhi, India. The results obtained by numerical simulation for four different cities, i.e., Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, and Indore, have been compared to study the effect of local climatic and seasonal variations within the composite climatic zones. The simulations were conducted using the Design Builder software to capture results for one year. The results indicate that no single passive design strategy is sufficient to maintain comfortable conditions inside the building. The cool roof provides significant benefits in combination with other passive technologies in all seasons except for December, January, and February. The combination of insulation and PCM is useful for winter conditions. Energy saving of up to 20.5% is possible using the combination of all four passive strategies, whereas the cool roof alone gives an 18% reduction in energy load. The PCM with a melting point of about 32 °C is suggested for the cities under study.