It is an increasing challenge for building designers in the 21st century to provide for thermal comfort at minimum energy cost by taking into consideration both the current and the future warming climate. Most previous studies have focused on thermal comfort in non-residential buildings under current climatic conditions. This study evaluates the impact of thermal comfort criteria by lowering the acceptability limits on space cooling energy requirements for Australian residential buildings, under both the current and projected future climates (with an assumed global warming of 2 °C) through building simulations using three different types of typical building constructions – lightweight, heavyweight, and a combination.
Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.10.110