DECREASING COOLING DEMAND OF OFFICE BUILDINGS IN ITALY THROUGH ADAPTIVESTRATEGIES

The cooling demand is now becoming the main cause of energy consumption in buildings, especially the ones that are characterized by high internal gains such as the office ones. The work reported in this paper analyzes the performance of typical office buildings within the Italian climatic context by the means of the simulation software TRNSYS, with particular focus on the cooling season. The set of case studies is developed considering seven locations, four orientations and five envelope solutions characterized by different glazed surfaces and different heat capacity levels, according to likely construction ages. Moreover, the effects of basic passive cooling strategies such as shading and night ventilation is also taken into account. Finally, the possible outcome of a variable management of the internal set-point temperature according to the “adaptive approach” has been compared to the results based on the conventional 26°C. This value is determined according to the most adopted thermal comfort theory, which is based on the “heat balance approach”: according to this approach the ideal indoor conditions are expressed as possible combinations of all the personal and environmental parameters involved in the heat exchanges between the occupants and the building zone. The alternative “adaptive approach” is based on the main assumption that occupants actually tend to interact with the indoor space, dynamically changing its thermal characteristics and their own clothing, therefore accepting wider and more variable temperature ranges. The introduction of the adaptive approach reveals large potential of energy savings, in particular emphasizing the better behavior of the old uninsulated buildings with high thermal mass