Combined thermal and daylight analysis of a typical public rental housing development to fulfil green building guidance in Hong Kong

This paper presents a combined daylight, airflow network and building energy simulation of a Public Rental Housing (PRH) development in Hong Kong to fulfil the requirement of the local green building guidance. The numerical modelling results are partly validated by on-site measurements during the period with the highest monthly average outdoor temperature. Different ventilation control strategies are simulated to optimize natural ventilation performance. The simulation results show that the full-day ventilation strategy contributes to a lower average and peak indoor temperatures compared to the non-ventilation and night-ventilation scenarios. The indoor operative temperature of a worst-case vacant flat lies under the upper 80% acceptability limits in ASHRAE 55 during 67.5% of the modelled period in July. On the other side, at least 95.6% of the habitable area in the case buildings is predicted to experience a higher average daylight factor of 1% compared with the local green building guidance. Furthermore, the energy saving potential of the combined natural ventilation and daylight strategies is anticipated to be 51.9% for air-conditioning and 8.3% for lighting compared to a baseline building, respectively.