Simulation Based Mixed Mode Building Design

Air-conditioning represents the major component of energy consumption in commercial buildings in India. A methodology is proposed to reduce the space cooling load by optimizing the building design using incremental integrated design approach and experimental design methods. This methodology is applied over a three story building in New Delhi climate. For the building, passive strategies are able to reduce the cooling load by 50% over the base case and low energy cooling techniques are able to reduce the cooling load by 50% over the passive case using incremental integrated design. Building is then optimized to use natural ventilation to the extent possible, while considering the uncertainty in input parameters, using design of experiments based methods. It is found that during winter months, building can be operated just using natural ventilation during office hours, while maintaining thermal comfort. Natural ventilation is able to reduce the energy consumption by about 15% over the incremental design case. The final achieved mixed mode design consumes 55% less energy, better daylighting, views and uses natural ventilation for 30% more hours as compared to the baseline case.