Comparison between different measures to reduce cooling requirements of residential building in cooling-dominated environment

In hot climate region like Arabian Peninsula, air conditioning systems are the major energy consumer. Therefore, there are compelling reasons to study the energy requirements in buildings sector to reduce the energy requirements and its environmental impact. Current paper shows the impact of different improvements on reducing cooling load of buildings in hot climate. The examined factors are (1) total heat transfer coefficient of the external shell, (2) indoor temperature, (3) lighting efficacy. For this purpose, a common type of residential house in Qatar was chosen as a case study. The cooling load was estimated using simulation model. The simulations show that there is big potential to reduce the cooling requirements in Qatar up to 46%. A brief economic comparison between the examined factors was done. The economic analysis shows that the payback time of applying the examined factors fall between 0.5 and 2 years. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.