Approach to local climate zone based energy consumption assessment in an Indian city

Urban areas housing 55% of the global population consume nearly 75% of the global primary energy supply. Rapid population growth and the current pace of urbanization are key challenges to urban sustainability and global energy security. The present study aims to investigate energy consumption patterns for two different building typologies (apartment and office) across major LCZs of Nagpur city using three different approaches (cooling degree days, building energy simulation and indoor operative temperature). It uses micro-meteorological data for two consecutive years as input for building energy simulations. The results show that LCZs exhibited maximum and minimum cooling load during 14:00-16:00 hrs and 06:00-08:00 hrs respectively. For apartment building, district cooling load was reported highest in LCZs 3, 3(F) and 9 in the range of 1290.23 GJ to 1311.13 GJ while open LCZs and zones with vegetation cover demonstrated lower cooling load. For office buildings, LCZ 9 (11.82%) demonstrated the maximum variation in district cooling load than LCZ 6(B). Office buildings require lesser cooling demand than the apartment buildings as they are only used during the daytime. The results provide indispensable information for building energy policymaking in different zones of a city supported by climate based recommendations. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Urban areas consume a significant amount of global energy and face challenges from population growth and urbanization. This study investigates the energy consumption patterns of different building types in Nagpur city and provides valuable information for building energy policy-making.