Feasibility assessment of passive cooling for office buildings in a temperate climate through uncertainty analysis

In this paper, the feasibility of passive cooling in newly built office buildings in the temperate climate of Belgium is assessed using the standardized adaptive comfort criteria. This is done through Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis of the simulated weighted exceeding time for different building designs with varying insulation level, glazing-to-wall-ratio, glazing type and air tightness. Two passive cooling schemes are studied: diurnal manual window operation and the combination of diurnal manual window operation and passive night ventilation. Additionally, two possible measures to limit heat gains, external solar shading and daylighting, are considered.The integration of a detailed model of window operation, establishing a real-time coupling between the thermal model and the behavioural model and thus allowing simulating adaptive behaviour, is shown to impact the results significantly and is therefore recommended by the authors.The uncertainty analysis shows that it is possible to cool office buildings solely by diurnal manual window operation, even for highly insulated and air tight buildings. This requires minimizing heat gains to about 900 kJ/m2 per working day during summer months. When a combination of diurnal window operation and night ventilation is available, limiting the heat gains to about 1500 kJ/m2 per working day suffices.

► A detailed behavioural model of window operation is coupled with thermal simulation.
► Monte Carlo analysis of summer comfort for passive cooling in office buildings.
► Robustness of window operation and night ventilation is assessed.
► Daily heat gain threshold values formulated for passive cooling of office buildings.