Impact of Urban Heat Island on Building Cooling Energy Consumption in Hangzhou

Typical meteorological year weather data file is necessary for evaluation of the thermal performance of buildings by simulation tools. The rapid and unsustainable urbanization process causes a serious existing thermal environmental problem that aggravates climatic change and generates a higher temperature in urban area than in rural area. The currently available weather data collected from rural meteorological station, thus the effect of urban heat island (UHI) could not be involved in the existing weather data file. Taking Hangzhou city in summer as a case, the impact of urban heat island on building energy consumption is evaluated in the paper. The modified weather data file is generated based on the collection of air temperature and relative humidity from 26 measurement sites in Hangzhou, taking into account the urban heat island effect from May to October. China Telecom Building in Hangzhou city centre is selected as target building. Simulation was conducted using the existing and modified typical meteorological year weather data files on Energy Plus. The study discovered that the gross cooling energy of the target building would increase at least 12.6% due to the impact of UHI in Hangzhou during summer period.