[New Article] Thermal resilience in a renovated dwelling during intense heat waves

During the last two years, our research team has been performing intensive field observations in the streets of Brussels during summers. The result of our observations is alarming. By 2030, the effect of bioclimatic design strategies during heat waves on improving thermal comfort will diminish completely in Brussels. Thermal mass, shading, natural ventilation and all other passive measures will not be able to improve the thermal resilience performance of residential buildings. The only way to survive will be based on our ability to mitigate the urban heat island effects and use a mixed-mode active cooling mode of operation to reduce the full dependence on active cooling. Based on these observations, the following research questions were formulated and addressed in this paper:

(1) How can heat waves in Belgium be detected and categorized?

(2) How resilient is the renovated nearly zero-energy dwelling against intense heat waves in Belgium?

Overheating risk is expected to rise in dwellings as heat waves continue increasing in intensity and duration. This paper presents a simulation-based study on thermal resilience in a benchmark renovated nearly zero-energy dwelling during intense heat waves in Belgium. Data analysis using thermal simulations of the reference dwelling with and without active cooling was used to assess overheating risk. The analysis indicated that the reference dwelling with active cooling was resilient to heat waves for over 91% of the occupied hours. Furthermore, the existing building-level renovation strategies alone will not be sufficient to mitigate overheating in renovated dwellings and require active cooling. However, active cooling came with an energy penalty of 37.69 kWh/day during the monitored period, and any potential benefits of active cooling should factor in the excess energy use. The presented findings lead to recommendations for future building renovation practices and identified needs for further research.

?? Citation:?Amaripadath, D., Joshi, M., Hamdy, M., Petersen, S., Stone Jr., B & Attia, S. (2023). Thermal resilience in a renovated nearly zero-energy dwelling during intense heat waves. Journal of Building PerformanceSimulation, Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom. DOI 10.1080/19401493.2023.2253460

?? Read and share the ?? article. The paper is available in Open Access format: https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/306144

This study was conducted under the leadership of Dr. Deepak Amaripadath and Shady Attia in collaboration with Mitali Joshi, PhD , Steffen Petersen and @Brian Stone. Thank Deepak Amaripadath for leading this ??collaboration initiative. Dr. Deepak Amaripadath developed the research in collaboration with MK-Engineering and Dr. Mirjana Velickovic. This paper required more than two years of work. Special thanks to all IEA EBC Annex 80-Resilient Cooling of Buildings team members.

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