Thermal Comfort: Energy Conservation In Building

Energy conservation in Buildings deals with the best use of energy in buildings which can be for its construction, for its running and its maintenance, by properly designing and orientation, use of climatic conditions, energy efficient equipments, inclusion of renewable and optimization of thermal comfort condition. Thermal comfort is defined as “that condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment” [1]. Thermal comfort standards are required to help building designers to provide an indoor climate that building occupants will find thermally comfortable. The definition of a good indoor climate is important to the success of a building, not only because it will make its occupants comfortable, but also because it

(i) Climate Responsive Buildings, (ii) Analysis, Simulation and Modelling, (iii) Zero Energy Buildings and (iv) Thermal Comfort, were conducted in order to obtain a valid research topic prior to the survey work [5]. J.F. Nicol, et al discussed the adaptive thermal comfort along with its difference with the rational indices by reviewing the work of adaptive thermal comfort researchers like deDear, Brager, Nicol, Humphreys and came to the conclusion that for a free running building, comfort temperature Tc depends on the outdoor temperature To [6]. Qi Jie Kwong, et al reviewed and discussed some of the major thermal comfort studies and noted the importance of thermal comfort evaluation towards energy conservation improvement in tropical buildings. He found that the present amount of work for tropical buildings is still scanty, and more work is required for development of adaptive comfort models

Nicol, et al discussed the methods used to develop the equation relating the neutral temperature to the outdoor temperature of the European Standard EN15251 applicable to buildings in the free-running mode [8]. Fergus Nicol advocated the reasons for the thermal parameters based PMV’s unsuitability to define thermal comfort [9]. He extended the Humphrey's Adaptive Thermal Comfort equations to include the air velocity and relative humidity varying locally. Michael A. Humphreys & Fergus Nicol used Statistical Regression Analysis to study the behaviour of PMV and its discrepancies when used for predicting subjective thermal comfort votes of people indoors in normal life [6]. They found a high statistical significance (t = 11.5, pα≥1, Trm(t) the mean temperature for a time t of a series at equal intervals (hours, days, etc), Tt-n the instantaneous temperature at n time-intervals previously. The larger the value of ‘α’ the more important is the effects of past temperatures. The outdoor running mean temperatures for each location for the day of survey in that location was calculated from the outdoor mean temperature of that location, taking α =