Transformative Technologies Program identifierSeries Energy Efficiency of Advanced Building Systems
W3162
Langue
English
Résumé
The largest source of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and around the world is buildings. As a consequence, building designers are encouraged to adopt designs that reduce operational energy, through both increasingly stringent energy codes and voluntary green building programs that go beyond code requirements. Among structural building materials, wood has by far the lowest heat conductivity. As a result it is typically easier to meet certain insulation targets (e.g., thermal transmission and effective thermal resistance) with wood-based wall systems when following current construction practices. Good envelopes greatly contribute to energy efficient buildings. However, there are many factors in addition to building envelope insulation levels that affect the operational energy of a building. This study aims to provide designers with information which will assist them to choose energy efficient exterior wall systems by providing energy consumption estimates for an archetypal 6-storey residential building. Comparisons were made among several exterior wall systems including light wood-framing, cross-laminated timber (CLT), steel-stud framing, and window walls, for a range of structural systems including structural steel, light wood-frame, CLT, heavy timber, and concrete. The opaque exterior wall assemblies targeted meeting the minimum thermal requirements based on the National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB. NRC 2011). A 3-D method was used to calculate effective R-values of these exterior walls by taking into account all thermal bridging, in comparison with a parallel-path flow method in compliance with the NECB. Three glazing ratios, including 30%, 50%, and 70%, and two efficiency levels for Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, termed basic HVAC and advanced HVAC, were also assessed. Whole-building energy consumption was simulated using EnergyPlus. Four climates, from Zone 4 to Zone 7, with cities of Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Edmonton to represent each climate, were selected in this study. The energy assessment was conducted by Morrison Hershfield.
A comparison of operational energy consumption among these different exterior wall systems for this archetypal 6-storey building has shown that accounting for thermal bridging is critically important for improving thermal performance of building envelopes. Wood-based systems including light wood-frame walls, CLT, and wood-framed infill walls in concrete structures have inherently lower thermal bridging compared with other systems, such as steel-frame walls in steel and concrete structures, or window walls in concrete or timber structures. Conclusions are provided for specific climates and cities in Section 4.2. General conclusions and highlights are summarized as follows:
Building envelope influences only the energy required for space conditioning. The space heating energy consumption ranged between 28% and 49% of the entire building energy consumption, when the basic HVAC type was used, for the four cities assessed in this study. An efficient HVAC system would further reduce the proportion of space heating energy consumption. The rest of the energy is used for hot water and electrical appliances etc.
Compared to the NECB-compliant calculation, the 3-D method showed a greatly reduced effective R-value of the opaque wall assemblies due to thermal bridging. Steel-stud wall assemblies showed much larger reductions in effective R-values than wood-based wall assemblies.
Wood-based walls in a light wood-frame building, or a CLT building, would improve building energy efficiency, with total energy savings ranging from 3% to 9%, compared to a concrete building with steel-stud walls, depending on the HVAC type and the glazing ratio, when the 3-D method was used for calculating thermal resistance. The energy savings were higher in colder climates, such as Toronto, Ottawa, and Edmonton, than in Vancouver.
The use of wood-frame infill wall in concrete structure improved the whole building energy efficiency by up to 6% depending on the climate, relative to the use of steel-stud infill walls, under the same HVAC (basic or efficient type) and glazing ratio (30% or 50%).
Concrete structures typically have much higher glazing ratios than wood buildings. The wood-framed building, with exterior-insulated walls meeting the thermal insulation requirements and at a glazing ratio of 30%, showed whole-building energy savings of about 13-18%, compared to a concrete structure with window walls at a glazing ratio of 70%.
Simply adding insulation (e.g., exterior insulation) in a building envelope while ignoring thermal bridging is not the most effective way to improve building energy efficiency.
The thermal bridging at window transitions greatly reduced the effective R-values of the opaque walls and consequently the whole-building energy efficiency. The higher the glazing ratio was, the larger the impact would be. Window wall with a high glazing ratio would further reduce building energy efficiency, compared with regular windows.
The energy efficiency of the HVAC system used in a building had the largest impact on the whole-building energy efficiency, compared to the impacts caused by exterior wall systems, glazing ratios, or thermal bridging at various details.
The energy efficiency measures studied in this report delivered higher energy savings in colder climates, such as Montreal, than in warmer climates, such as Vancouver.
It is recommended that future effort be put into further developing tools for practitioners to account for thermal bridging more conveniently.