Monthly-Averaged Cooling Load Calculations—Residential and Small Commercial Buildings

Abstract

A simplifed design method for estimating the sensible component of the cooling load of skin dominated buildings suitable for use on programmable calculators or microcomputers is developed. The method uses monthly averaged meteorological data to predict long term energy requirements for cooling using a semi-analytical model. Existing concepts such as variable base degree days and the monthly averaged solar utilizability are applied to the cooling problem. New solar utilizability correlations for multiple aperture solar collectors are used in conjunction with the variable base degree-day method to predict the sensible component of the cooling load for low mass structures. The effect of thermal mass present within the building is then incorporated through the use of an empirical model developed in this work. The method predicts annual cooling loads with an average error of 10 percent with respect to an hourly simulation computer program.