Correlation analysis of energy consumption and indoor long-term thermal environment of a residential building

In China, energy consumption (EC) obtained by simulation is usually used as an indicator to assess residential building performance at the design phase. For free running buildings, due to the absence of heating/cooling equipment, EC may not be an appropriate indicator and using EC as a measure of building thermal performance may cause misleading at the design phase. In this paper, thermal discomfort rate (TDCR) was proposed as an indoor long-term thermal environment indicator, and was used to analyze the difference of building performance caused by using different evaluation indicators. Results showed that there existed a strong correlation between EC and TDCR when changing envelope design, but the trend and sensitivity may be different. Therefore, using EC to assess the thermal performance of free running buildings at the design phase may lead to poor indoor thermal environment. The results in this paper can be used to guide building design and energy-saving policy making.