IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v13y2020i9p2382-d356031.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Modeling Thermal Interactions between Buildings in an Urban Context

Author

Listed:
  • Xuan Luo

    (Building Technology and Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

  • Tianzhen Hong

    (Building Technology and Urban Systems Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

  • Yu-Hang Tang

    (Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

Abstract

Thermal interactions through longwave radiation exchange between buildings, especially in a dense urban environment, can strongly influence a building’s energy use and environmental impact. However, these interactions are either neglected or oversimplified in urban building energy modeling. We developed a new feature in EnergyPlus to explicitly consider this term in the surface heat balance calculations and developed an algorithm to batch calculating the surrounding surfaces’ view factors using a ray-tracing technique. We conducted a case study with a district in the Chicago downtown area to evaluate the longwave radiant heat exchange effects between urban buildings. Results show that the impact of the longwave radiant effects on annual energy use ranges from 0.1% to 3.3% increase for cooling and 0.3% to 3.6% decrease for heating, varying among individual buildings. At the district level, the total energy demand increases by 1.39% for cooling and decreases 0.45% for heating. We also observe the longwave radiation can increase the exterior surface temperature by up to 10 °C for certain exterior surfaces. These findings justify a detailed and accurate way to consider the thermal interactions between buildings in an urban context to inform urban planning and design.

Suggested Citation

  • Xuan Luo & Tianzhen Hong & Yu-Hang Tang, 2020. "Modeling Thermal Interactions between Buildings in an Urban Context," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-17, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:9:p:2382-:d:356031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2382/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2382/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Li, Wenliang & Zhou, Yuyu & Cetin, Kristen & Eom, Jiyong & Wang, Yu & Chen, Gang & Zhang, Xuesong, 2017. "Modeling urban building energy use: A review of modeling approaches and procedures," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 2445-2457.
    2. You Jin Kwon & Dong Kun Lee, 2019. "Thermal Comfort and Longwave Radiation over Time in Urban Residential Complexes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-19, April.
    3. Chen, Yixing & Hong, Tianzhen & Piette, Mary Ann, 2017. "Automatic generation and simulation of urban building energy models based on city datasets for city-scale building retrofit analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 323-335.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ehsan Kamel, 2022. "A Systematic Literature Review of Physics-Based Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) Tools, Data Sources, and Challenges for Energy Conservation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-24, November.
    2. Hu, Yuqing & Cheng, Xiaoyuan & Wang, Suhang & Chen, Jianli & Zhao, Tianxiang & Dai, Enyan, 2022. "Times series forecasting for urban building energy consumption based on graph convolutional network," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    3. Yue Zheng & Jinpei Ou & Guangzhao Chen & Xinxin Wu & Xiaoping Liu, 2022. "Mapping Building-Based Spatiotemporal Distributions of Carbon Dioxide Emission: A Case Study in England," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-22, May.
    4. Valeria Todeschi & Roberto Boghetti & Jérôme H. Kämpf & Guglielmina Mutani, 2021. "Evaluation of Urban-Scale Building Energy-Use Models and Tools—Application for the City of Fribourg, Switzerland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-22, February.
    5. Guglielmina Mutani & Valeria Todeschi & Simone Beltramino, 2020. "Energy Consumption Models at Urban Scale to Measure Energy Resilience," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-31, July.
    6. Xavier Faure & Tim Johansson & Oleksii Pasichnyi, 2022. "The Impact of Detail, Shadowing and Thermal Zoning Levels on Urban Building Energy Modelling (UBEM) on a District Scale," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-18, February.
    7. Fahad Haneef & Giovanni Pernigotto & Andrea Gasparella & Jérôme Henri Kämpf, 2021. "Application of Urban Scale Energy Modelling and Multi-Objective Optimization Techniques for Building Energy Renovation at District Scale," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-26, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tian, Shen & Shao, Shuangquan & Liu, Bin, 2019. "Investigation on transient energy consumption of cold storages: Modeling and a case study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 1-9.
    2. Younghun Choi & Takuro Kobashi & Yoshiki Yamagata & Akito Murayama, 2021. "Assessment of waterfront office redevelopment plan on optimal building energy demand and rooftop photovoltaics for urban decarbonization," Papers 2108.09029, arXiv.org.
    3. Aldubyan, Mohammad & Krarti, Moncef, 2022. "Impact of stay home living on energy demand of residential buildings: Saudi Arabian case study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(PA).
    4. Ali, Usman & Shamsi, Mohammad Haris & Bohacek, Mark & Purcell, Karl & Hoare, Cathal & Mangina, Eleni & O’Donnell, James, 2020. "A data-driven approach for multi-scale GIS-based building energy modeling for analysis, planning and support decision making," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    5. Bianchi, Carlo & Zhang, Liang & Goldwasser, David & Parker, Andrew & Horsey, Henry, 2020. "Modeling occupancy-driven building loads for large and diversified building stocks through the use of parametric schedules," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
    6. Wenliang Li, 2020. "Quantifying the Building Energy Dynamics of Manhattan, New York City, Using an Urban Building Energy Model and Localized Weather Data," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-22, June.
    7. Katal, Ali & Mortezazadeh, Mohammad & Wang, Liangzhu (Leon) & Yu, Haiyi, 2022. "Urban building energy and microclimate modeling – From 3D city generation to dynamic simulations," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 251(C).
    8. Valeria Todeschi & Roberto Boghetti & Jérôme H. Kämpf & Guglielmina Mutani, 2021. "Evaluation of Urban-Scale Building Energy-Use Models and Tools—Application for the City of Fribourg, Switzerland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-22, February.
    9. Kobashi, Takuro & Choi, Younghun & Hirano, Yujiro & Yamagata, Yoshiki & Say, Kelvin, 2022. "Rapid rise of decarbonization potentials of photovoltaics plus electric vehicles in residential houses over commercial districts," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PB).
    10. Yang, Xiu'e & Liu, Shuli & Zou, Yuliang & Ji, Wenjie & Zhang, Qunli & Ahmed, Abdullahi & Han, Xiaojing & Shen, Yongliang & Zhang, Shaoliang, 2022. "Energy-saving potential prediction models for large-scale building: A state-of-the-art review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    11. Mauree, Dasaraden & Naboni, Emanuele & Coccolo, Silvia & Perera, A.T.D. & Nik, Vahid M. & Scartezzini, Jean-Louis, 2019. "A review of assessment methods for the urban environment and its energy sustainability to guarantee climate adaptation of future cities," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 733-746.
    12. Ehsan Kamel, 2022. "A Systematic Literature Review of Physics-Based Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) Tools, Data Sources, and Challenges for Energy Conservation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-24, November.
    13. Yang, Xining & Hu, Mingming & Heeren, Niko & Zhang, Chunbo & Verhagen, Teun & Tukker, Arnold & Steubing, Bernhard, 2020. "A combined GIS-archetype approach to model residential space heating energy: A case study for the Netherlands including validation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    14. Wang, Wei & Hong, Tianzhen & Xu, Xiaodong & Chen, Jiayu & Liu, Ziang & Xu, Ning, 2019. "Forecasting district-scale energy dynamics through integrating building network and long short-term memory learning algorithm," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 248(C), pages 217-230.
    15. Heidenthaler, Daniel & Deng, Yingwen & Leeb, Markus & Grobbauer, Michael & Kranzl, Lukas & Seiwald, Lena & Mascherbauer, Philipp & Reindl, Patricia & Bednar, Thomas, 2023. "Automated energy performance certificate based urban building energy modelling approach for predicting heat load profiles of districts," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PB).
    16. Verena Weiler & Jonas Stave & Ursula Eicker, 2019. "Renewable Energy Generation Scenarios Using 3D Urban Modeling Tools—Methodology for Heat Pump and Co-Generation Systems with Case Study Application †," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-19, January.
    17. Zinzi, Michele & Carnielo, Emiliano & Mattoni, Benedetta, 2018. "On the relation between urban climate and energy performance of buildings. A three-years experience in Rome, Italy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 148-160.
    18. Solène Goy & François Maréchal & Donal Finn, 2020. "Data for Urban Scale Building Energy Modelling: Assessing Impacts and Overcoming Availability Challenges," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-23, August.
    19. Langevin, J. & Reyna, J.L. & Ebrahimigharehbaghi, S. & Sandberg, N. & Fennell, P. & Nägeli, C. & Laverge, J. & Delghust, M. & Mata, É. & Van Hove, M. & Webster, J. & Federico, F. & Jakob, M. & Camaras, 2020. "Developing a common approach for classifying building stock energy models," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    20. Nutkiewicz, Alex & Yang, Zheng & Jain, Rishee K., 2018. "Data-driven Urban Energy Simulation (DUE-S): A framework for integrating engineering simulation and machine learning methods in a multi-scale urban energy modeling workflow," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 225(C), pages 1176-1189.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:9:p:2382-:d:356031. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.