EUI Study - Envelope Upgrades
Once you have a baseline thermal model with adjusted internal gains, you can explore a series of different building envelope upgrades. To start, please go over this video tutorial.
Explore different measures to improve the thermal performance of the building envelope including adding insulation to exterior walls and roof, trying different glazing types and adding external shading devices and/or dynamic blinds. Based on your explorations, select at least three upgrades that you want to pursue and present them using the ClimateStudio results comparison chart. Please also include your baseline and adjusted internal gains results. Figure 1 shows an example chart for the DOE Medium Office Building.
Figure 1: ClimateStudio EUI comparison chart for envelope upgrades for the Medium Office Boston
Table 1: Description of upgrade variants from Figure 1
Document you upgrades using a figure or table and comment on your findings. For example, Table 1 describes the Reduced Loads, Solar Control and External Blinds variants from Figure 1. The figure shows that electric lighting loads can be significantly reduced via a reduced equipment loads, lighting power density. The Solar Control glazing mainly reduces heating loads since if has a similar SHGC as the original glazing but lower glazing U-value. External blinds deployed during summer only further reduce cooling loads. Such a system need additional glare control during winter via internal roller shades.
Tip: Good Modeling Practice - Once you are satisfied with an energy upgrade, save the zone template in the Rhino file so that you can retrieve it later.
