Technical and Economical Efficiency of Thermal Mass in Temperate Climate, The case of Central Western of Argentina.

ALFREDO ESTEVES; DANIEL GELARDI; CAROLINA GANEM; M. VICTORIA MERCADO

Denver, Colorado

Congreso; World Renewable Energy Congress and VIII Expo WREC; 2004

PLEA International. Sustanaible Architecture + Urban Design

The role of mass in the storage of energy in buildings has long been a subject of interest in bioclimatic and sustainable buildings. The thermal inertia of building mass is used to produce heat up relatively slowly. For its there are often energy available from solar and internal gains during the daytime that is greater than the daytime heating requirements. This energy may be stored in the buidling structure and furnishings, and released at night to offset the buiding heat loss. In a similar manner, building mass may allow the structure to remain cool during daytime in summer and reduce air condictioning requirements. In this paper it is showed economical and technical efficiency of thermal mass and it conclude that, technical efficiency depend on thermal characteristic of building, but it is possible to obtain between 69.3% and 95.8% of savings if building have thermal mass surface between envelope surface and envelope and internal partitions surface.