Energy thermal redesign of a bioclimatic school through monitoring and simulation

SOLEDAD ORCE SCHWARZ ; SILVANA FLORES LARSEN; CELINA FILIPPÍN; GRACIELA LESINO

Congreso; 2013 ISES Solar World Congress; 2013

It is well known that in Argentina, public buildings are replicated all over the country by repeating the same design and without considering the climate differences between regions. This paper shows a case study of an energy efficient school building that was designed for a climate region where it showed an excellent thermal and energy behaviour, and that required to be built in another region with a different climate. The study of the strategies needed to adapt the building design to the new location was made through transient thermal simulation. The original design was planned by the authors in the province of La Pampa, in central Argentina, and it included the use of passive systems to achieve energy conservation, comfortable indoor environments, low consumption of conventional energy, and significant reductions in CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. This building was extensively monitored and it achieved excellent levels of energy saving and indoor environmental comfort. A validated transient termophysical model of this building was obtained by using the software SIMEDIF and adjusting the transient simulation with real measured data. Then, this original building was simulated under the climate of Cachi, in the Argentinean Puna on the Andes Mountains. The simulation allowed to evaluate design strategies and materials applicable to the new climate scenario.