Sensitivity Analysis of Office Building Heating, Cooling, and Electricity Energy Consumption to Internal Heat Gain Sources in Hot and Humid Zones

Office buildings consume a considerable amount of energy. One of the major components in office buildings that impact energy consumption and demand of the building as well as sizing Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems are internal heat gains. Lights, electrical equipment, and people are three components of internal heat gains. This research seeks to investigate the sensitivity of these components to the electricity, heating, and cooling energy consumption of a zone in a typical office building in hot and humid climate. In order to achieve this analysis, Lighting Power Density (LPD), Plug Load Density (PLD), and area per person has been studied for lights, electrical equipment, and people, respectively. Results reveal the high impact of PLD on all sections of energy consumption. The effect of LPD is also considerable, although it is approximately half of the impact of PLD. The direct effect of area per person is trivial compared to the impact of PLD and LPD. However, people density can highly impact other changes such as air change per hour that is out of the scope of this research

Keywords:

energy consumption , office building , cooling , heating , electricity , internal heat gains