Impact of radiation exchange between buildings in urban street canyons on space cooling demands of buildings

• An important part of the world’s energy is used for cooling of buildings.
• Cooling demands of buildings in urban areas are influenced by the urban microclimate.
• BES are conducted to study the influence of neighbouring buildings.
• Neighbouring buildings alter solar gains by shadowing and reflecting solar radiation.
• Solar gains are strongly influence by the control strategy of the shading devices.

There is worldwide a trend towards urbanization, and cities try to improve their sustainability by saving natural resources and energy, and to mitigate the impact of climate change. Therefore growing cities need to optimize the energy demand of their new and existing buildings. There are a large number of urban scale phenomena that influence the energy demand of buildings. One of the most important influencing phenomena is the shortwave solar and longwave radiation exchange within an urban environment. It was demonstrated that the influence of neighbouring buildings has to be considered in detail to predict correctly the building energy demand. In this study, space cooling demand of stand-alone buildings is compared with buildings in an urban street canyon configuration. Detailed radiation models for the solar and longwave radiation are used to determine the radiation exchange between the buildings. The results show a strong influence of neighbouring buildings on the space cooling demands. This influence is strongly dependent on the shading device control strategy incorporated in the building energy management. Counterintuitively the space cooling demands are in some cases are higher for low values of solar irradiance, because the shading device control directs the devices to remain open during longer time periods when irradiance values are low, leading to higher total solar gains through the windows.