Coupling a Building Energy Simulation Tool with a Microclimate Model to Assess the Impact of cool Pavements on the Building’s Energy Performance. Application in a Dense Residential Area

Abstract

Replacing conventional pavements with the corresponding high albedo ones constitutes a well-known technique to improve outdoor thermal environment of modern cites. Since most of the existing studies assess the impact of the high albedo pavements at the pedestrian’s height and with respect to thermal comfort, this study aims to examine the effect of the application of highly reflective pavements on the heating and cooling energy needs of a building unit, located inside a dense urban area. Aiming at a higher accuracy of the energy performance simulations, an integrated computational method between ENVI-met model, Meteonorm weather data generator and Energy Plus software is established, to consider the site-specific microclimatic characteristics of the urban areas. The analysis is performed both for the design and the aged albedo values as significant changes may occur due to aging process. The analysis revealed that the application of cool materials on the ground surfaces only marginally affects the energy performance of the examined building unit, both for the design and the aged albedo value; changes on the annual heating and cooling energy demand, for both albedo scenarios did not exceed 1.5% revealing the limited potential of cool pavements regarding the improvement of the energy performance of urban building units.