Energy conservation between natural ventilated and air-conditioned classroom in Taiwan

Abstract

The energy consumption between natural ventilated classrooms (NVs) and air-conditioned classrooms (ACs) is different in hot and humid Taiwan. Energy conservation is related with the thermal comfort of occupants in these classrooms. This study proposed an electronic questionnaire and instruments to facilitate the continuous monitoring of the physical parameters to investigate the satisfied level of thermal comfort of students in classrooms. The investigated results show the average clothing value (clo) around 0.7. During the hot days (clo<0.7), students’ acceptable range of temperature range in NVs was between 26.2℃– 28.2℃ (neutral temp.=27.3℃, neutral RH=59.9%) and 24.2℃–27.7℃ (neutral temp.=26.3℃, neutral RH=57.2%) in ACs. During the cold days (clo≧0.7), students’ acceptable range of temperature in NVs was between 20.9℃–25.1℃ (neutral temp.=23.0℃, neutral RH=55.3%) and 22.0℃–25.4℃ (neutral temp.=23.7℃, neutral RH=55.6%) in ACs. The maximum acceptable thermal temperature of students in NVs (27.3℃) is 1℃ higher than that in ACs (26.3℃) and 1.3℃ higher than the ASHRAE Standard 55 (26℃). The result implies that 6% energy can be saved between NVs and ACs and 7.8% energy can be saved compared with ASHRAE Standard 55. This study proposes the best solution of energy conservation between NVs and ACs.